


The Four Flowers

by homsantoft (tofsla)



Category: Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Fairy Tale, Canon-Typical Violence, Folklore, M/M, Marking, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Rescue Missions, Significant Kneeling, Sparring and Sex, Tam Lin - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-04
Updated: 2015-09-04
Packaged: 2018-04-17 12:08:36
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 38,183
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4665987
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tofsla/pseuds/homsantoft
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Iron Bull, Tal-Vashoth and directionless, meets a mage in the woods and tries to provoke him into a fight.</p><p>A loose interpretation of Tam Lin, Tevinter style.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Among the Leaves

**Author's Note:**

> Some time back in May, [James](http://archiveofourown.org/users/iambic) and I dared one another to write fic based on [Tam Lin](http://tam-lin.org/). Everything spiraled out of control from there. In my version, Dorian plays the role of Tam Lin; the evil twin of this story, with the roles reversed, will also appear as part of the mini bang. 
> 
> A million thanks owed for this one getting done. Specifically, thank you to: Bri and James, for cheerleading & providing feedback every step of the way; Val, for support feedback and Thoughts About Fairy-Tales; June, for trouble-shooting and beta-reading; Sam, for beta-reading and getting me to kill my darlings; and Katie, Jay and AuntShoe, for boundless enthusiasm. Thanks to Katie and Jay, also, for the incredible artwork. You were both a joy to collaborate with.

"Bad idea," Vanna said, mouth pulled into a hard line of disapproval. Her horns curved gently upward, polished to a smooth finish that gleamed under the lanterns. "My advice? Just drop the job. There's more to be had out there, I hear."

The Iron Bull shrugged one huge shoulder, let her dump more stew into his bowl. "Hey now, there's no need to be like that. Some of us have a reputation to keep up."

"I don't know how it works wherever you come from," she said, "but from where I'm standing it looks like there's not much point to a reputation if you're not around to enjoy it."

"Well," The Iron Bull said, "if some demon steps out of Tevinter to snatch me up, at least that's one of your lot who catches a break. Not going over the border, anyway."

"You'll do as you like, of course," she told him, and although the look they exchanged bordered on confrontational, the argument ended there. He was right, after all.

 

 

The Iron Bull left the Vashoth who'd sheltered him in the early morning, while the light that filtered through the high canopy was still faint. Unknown night animals rustled through the undergrowth on their way to their secret dens, and Vanna watched him go while the others slept; she'd been good to him, and he was pretty sure she prayed to her ancestors that he wouldn't come back, with his uncomfortable scars and guarded looks. Oh, she'd been born Vashoth for sure, but she'd known Seheron's marks when she saw them just the same. Who wanted to break bread with the dregs of that mess? Nobody smart.

She had warned him in particular about the path by the river, and so that was the way he turned. The water was black and slow-flowing, the banks overhung with curling ferns and trailing grasses. There was grass between the ancient stones of the road, too, forcing its way up toward the light.

As he walked, the undergrowth grew thicker, but the background fidgeting chatter of the birds faded curiously. 

The Iron Bull, satisfied, touched his hand reflexively to the haft of his axe and pressed on.

 

 

The sun was high overhead when The Iron Bull found the clearing: a sudden startling flood of sunlight as the canopy opened up above him and the tree-trunks gave way to a small meadow, flowers scattered all through it, right down to the river. The scent of them rose in the warm air.

Antivan crap. Three magical flowers from a special clearing in one particular forest. Still, if he was going to be paid well, he didn't really have any inclination to share his views on intricate human rituals. Good coin was good coin, and there were people who needed it more than some noble.

The place was peaceful. Beautiful, too. Made him want to lie down and stretch himself out in the sun and sleep.

That should have been the first warning.

But The Iron Bull was on guard for a different sort of bewitchment, and there was no movement between the trees; the feeling seemed, as such things often do, an entirely natural one.

He sank down onto his knee in the long grass. Delicate white flowers like small stars. Between his thick fingers they seemed to become even smaller, but they resisted being picked; it required just the right sharp tug to break the stem. 

One he had picked and laid carefully on a spread scrap of cloth beside him, and his fingers were closed on another, when he felt it: the sickening tug of magic around him, like freefall from a cliff-edge. 

"I wouldn't pick another," a voice said from above him, "if I were you."

The Iron Bull looked up slowly, forearm pressed to thigh to steady himself. Before him, a man, short robes over leather, a glimpse of brown skin here and there. Broad shoulders and fine fingers, and the first hints of wrinkles around the corners of the eyes. He had a groomed, haughty look to him, and he stood before The Iron Bull as a lord surveying his vassal. But his tone had not quite managed to match his imperious look.

His clothing shimmered a little in the sun, but nothing else about him looked unworldly. Still, The Iron Bull wasn't a fool. It wasn't a matter of being quiet or careful: he just hadn't been there at all, and then he had been.

They watched each other in silence. The Iron Bull's knee began to ache from holding the position.

"Oh yeah?" he said, finally. "And what if I do, Tevinter? Going to take my soul?"

He might have expected many responses, but not this: a startled, almost hysterical laugh, bitten off with force. A quick chase of emotions across that pretty face. "Well," the man said, with a certain edge of instability to his tone, "if we're to deal in hearsay, I imagine most would say that you should be far more worried about my designs on your body."

It was the lack of conviction that decided The Iron Bull. " _Really_ ," he said, and, with a deliberately exaggerated motion, broke the stem of a second flower.

The man's expression wavered again, and again he collected himself quickly.

Funny, The Iron Bull thought, to see a demon who hesitated to follow through. 

"Oh, for _goodness' sake,_ " the man said. His gaze lingered on The Iron Bull, not with the calculating manner of a butcher, but with a hot interest, poorly hidden. The muscles of his arms, the breadth of his chest: these were the things the man focused on. His lips, for a beat, before the man turned his face sharply away.

Designs on his body, was it? A chance for follow-up innuendo, completely wasted.

"You know," The Iron Bull said, keeping his tone carefully conversational, because you really could never fucking tell, "not that I'm complaining, but aren't you meant to try and screw me over about now?"

"Ah," the man said. "Yes. I am, after all, some sort of evil demon from Tevinter." 

He sighed.

"You know," he added, "I'm not entirely sure _you_ aren't a demon, if it comes to that."

The Iron Bull snorted. A dismissive noise. Control. "Well then, here we are."

"In the event, it makes no difference, I suppose," the man said. "A price has to be paid, you know. Laws are very dull things."

"Right," The Iron Bull said. "Right. Sure." It would be hard to get the drop on the man like this, but he thought he could probably do it. Axe over his shoulder and brought down foreward in one motion, let the momentum carry him up onto his feet—hadn't he come here looking for a fight where he wouldn't feel bad about pulping his opponent? Hit some shit, prove a point?

The man pressed two of his fingers to his lips, as if in thought. He said: "You know, in this situation it would be usual," and then, in startlement, as The Iron Bull came up swinging, " _vishante kaffas_ , you are a fucking _savage_."

The Iron Bull's axe met no resistance, thudding down solidly into the soft earth of the meadow. He hadn't even seen the man move. He certainly felt the rest of his reaction: the overpowering surge of magical energy that slammed him forward onto the ground beside his axe and held him there, unseen and irresistible. 

"Do you really think," the man said, and paused on a sigh. The Iron Bull found that he could roll over onto his back, although if he tried to sit his body resisted him. The man's hair was a little out of place. He breathed hard. Anger seemed more likely than exertion. 

The Iron Bull had tried to hit him with a fucking axe, and that was it.

He was also frowning.

"Do you really think," he said again, "that you can get the better of me? Split my chest open, perhaps, or—or pin me down?"

I'd buy you dinner first, The Iron Bull thought, and wanted to laugh.

"Not today, apparently," he said, testing the limits of his freedom once more for the hell of it, though he knew that it wouldn't do any good. To fight a losing battle for the sake of it was pride, and there was no place for that under the Qun. That was probably why he did it. Messing with himself like a real Tal-Vashoth. "Let's hear your damn terms, then."

"For the first flower," the man said, "I will have—your name." He was playing for drama now, a heavy pause and a little flourish with his hand.

His name. A Tevinter could do a lot with a name, The Iron Bull had heard. Although not quite as much as with blood. But, shit, there he was. No leverage to speak of beyond the distant possibility that the man found him attractive, and that wasn't necessarily going to work in his favour.

"The Iron Bull," he said. "Mind the article, it's important."

He found himself the subject of careful study.

"No," the man said. "That won't do. It's too new, and you don't quite believe it yet."

The Iron Bull gave him a flat look, which was met with a shrug.

"Hissrad," he tried. Somehow, he was starting to doubt that was going to fly either. Maybe a few years ago. But Hissrad had ceased to be.

The continuing silence seemed to confirm this theory.

"Must you make this difficult?" the man said finally. At least he sounded as if his patience was genuinely being tested. A small consolation.

"Yes," The Iron Bull said. "It's what I do. I'm good at it."

"I have a very long time, and magic at my disposal," the man said, a little flare of real anger. "I can make your existence very miserable indeed. You don't want to do this."

He was right, of course, The Iron Bull thought, though it frustrated him. Maybe one day he'd have used his new name enough to break it in, make it comfortable. He'd turned it over in his mind constantly, said it to himself to feel the shape of it, but when he woke in panicked confusion over memories of blood and death, struggling to remember who he was, the name that he thought was still—

"Ashkaari," he said, defeated, and let his head slump back heavily onto the ground. Stared up at the blue circle of sky above them, shaded to white by the glare of the sun.

Tama, if it gets in my head, how do I cut it out?

" _Thank_ you," the man said, with an exasperated sigh. "Was that really so hard?"

The Iron Bull rolled his eyes. Obviously he'd get ensnared by the kind of demon who loved the sound of his own voice.

The man pretended not to notice. "For all others, the price is the same. You stay here in this clearing until the sun leaves it. A day for a flower."

"All others," The Iron Bull said. 

"You hardly seem like a man who knows when to stop."

"You just can't get enough of me, can you," The Iron Bull said, and smirked up at him. Ideally it'd have been a leer, but his position stuck on the ground was cramping his style a bit.

"Did I say I would be here?" the man said, and then, "You agree?"

The Iron Bull didn't really think about the prospect—not much of a choice to be made. Two flowers taken, one to go, and not much prospect of fighting his way out of his current predicament. But he took a moment to give the impression of consideration.

"Sure," he said.

The air cleared of magic, and The Iron Bull took a shuddering breath, tested moving and found that he could sit up.

"Call me Dorian, I suppose," the man said, and stretched out a hand as though meaning to help The Iron Bull to his feet. The Iron Bull pointedly ignored it, and remained sitting—he could heave himself up, but right at that moment there was a definite risk that his leg would fail to take his weight. Better, always, to avoid showing particular weaknesses.

Dorian withdrew his hand and settled himself down onto the grass as well, facing The Iron Bull. There was none of the visible performance of fastidiousness that The Iron Bull was expecting, but somehow his robes ended up perfectly arranged anyway.

"Why are you here?" he asked, after watching The Iron Bull for a very still moment, eyes on his face, his broad horns. "We're a long way from Par Vollen."

"Long damn way from Minrathous, too," The Iron Bull said, "but here _you_ are."

A moment ago, there had been a liveliness to Dorian's expression. The Iron Bull had not fully registered it, but it became notable in its sudden absence. "Do you mean to say you know who I am?"

"A guess," The Iron Bull said. "You smell like—"

"Ah," Dorian said, and, curiously, seemed to relax a little. "Some of my fellows have been spending time on Seheron, I take it?"

There had been a warning, spoken to him long ago: 

Those who are of Minrathous carry the scent of the orange groves that nestle between their ancient buildings with them. But you must never accept their food. 

The Iron Bull, who had been Hissrad then, had wanted to laugh at that. As though he would accept food from anyone of Tevinter. Minrathous, Vyrantium or Qarinus, they all needed to die.

But he hadn't forgotten the words. Funny.

"Some of your fellows have been killing children on Seheron," The Iron Bull said, "if that's what you mean."

Dorian sighed, a definitely pained look on his face. A crease between those expressive eyebrows. "Of course they have."

The silence they lapsed into was watchful, but without the unease that ought to have filled it. No bird sang to break it, still, and the river ran too deep and slow to make a sound. But a wind that couldn't be felt in the clearing stirred the tops of the trees, setting them sighing.

The shadows lengthened very slowly.

"I was to go to Seheron, or perhaps to Nevarra. A brief visit, but all the same." Dorian hesitated, sighed again, letting all his breath go at once. "I—"

But the last of the sunlight had left the trees around the clearing, plunging them entirely into cool evening shadows, the first beginning of twilight. The flowers that filled the clearing had closed their petals.

"It's time for you to go, I think," he said. "You don't owe me anything more."

The Iron Bull got heavily to his feet, stretched out the aches that had settled into his joints from too long in the same position. Pulled his axe from the earth and cleaned the blade, not very efficiently—something to do before he slept. "Right," he said.

"Take your flowers," Dorian said. "You've paid for them, after all."

The Iron Bull settled his axe into its place on his back, and bent down to collect the flowers in their loose cloth wrapping.

When he straightened up again, the clearing was empty—of Dorian, and of the underlying peaceful feeling that had held him all through the day, against all reason. Like Dorian's liveliness, The Iron Bull understood it first by its absence. How much had that quiet suggestion of peace persuaded him to give up?

Unsettled, he walked back along the path the way he had come. Vanna would probably allow him another night, to sleep, and to order his thoughts.

 

 

Vanna saw it on him right away, sniffed at him. "If I were to put iron to you now, would you burn?"

Superstitions. But she accepted the deer he'd felled on the path back, feeding in the fading dusk, and she accepted his coin for a tent.

"One night," The Iron Bull said.

She shrugged. "Stay as many as you choose. It isn't us you'll destroy."

"I'll only need one," he said, and felt the wrongness as he said the words. He was not a person who liked to indulge in self-deception.

"As you say," she said, and meant: liar.

Liar had been his name once. But, as Dorian had seen, no longer.

He slept poorly, and woke at sunrise. When he looked at the flowers he'd taken they showed no sign of wilting, and when he left the camp, it was by the same route he had taken the previous day, and every step of the way he thought of a reason he shouldn't go back. Not even for one more flower, not even for good money.

 

 

In the clearing, peace settled over him.

"Ah," Dorian said. "I thought as much. You simply can't resist my marvelous good looks or my wit and charm."

The Iron Bull laid his flower carefully in a pouch with the other two, unhurried, before he turned to look.

Dorian was smiling, as though at an excellent joke. It creased the corners of his eyes. The expression suited him.

He's a demon, The Iron Bull reminded himself. But he felt disconnected from the idea. He thought: maybe this is what being Tal-Vashoth is like. Losing your sense of judgement.

He felt disconnected from that as well right then, with the warmth of the sun on his face.

"Hey," he said, "you're an attractive man."

Dorian hid his startlement quickly, but for a moment it was plain. The way his throat moved as he swallowed.

"As you say," he said softly, but he didn't look at The Iron Bull as he did so.

There was silence between them again. Dorian turned away, and sat himself cross-legged in the grass. He had a book with him, and this he lay open on his lap. The parchment looked old, the pages tending to try and curl. As he settled it, the heavy binding creaked.

He was unguarded. Civilian, The Iron Bull thought, reflexively cataloguing his enemy. Or his opponent, at least. 

Dorian was dangerous, definitely, but The Iron Bull couldn't see him as a combatant, unless he was playing a deeper game than The Iron Bull would've credited him with, trying to get him to drop his guard in turn.

Demons, he thought again, and failed again to believe it. The disgust he wanted to feel was beyond his reach.

He couldn't see Dorian's face, but his fingers rested delicately on the page, traced lines of text and lingered on illustrations. He seemed—not deeply absorbed, but as though he would like to appear to be.

"So," The Iron Bull said, sitting himself down, laying his axe very deliberately aside as a token of goodwill, "these flowers. What is it about them that's worth all this?"

Dorian's fingers stilled, only the very tips against the page. He wore many rings, and they caught the sunlight unpredictably, sparking and shining as though with their own inner magic. It was a slight tremor in Dorian's hand that caused it, The Iron Bull realised. A moment later he understood the tremor to be laughter.

"Do you really mean to tell me," Dorian said, "that you agreed to my price without knowing what you were paying for?" He had turned slightly, enough for The Iron Bull to see his expression in profile, the amused little curl of his lips.

"I'm getting paid," The Iron Bull said.

"Paid enough that your true name seemed a reasonable price for something you don't understand?"

"Oh, come on," The Iron Bull said. "That's low. I didn't ask you to explain what _you're_ doing out here. Although, come to think of it—"

Dorian closed his book very deliberately, and fastened the metal clasp that held it shut. "Really?" he said. "We're really doing this?"

"Hey, you wanted the pleasure of my company."

"That's not," Dorian started, and broke off with a noise of frustration. "Naturally. I must detest peace and quiet."

The Iron Bull had a growing suspicion that this last was in fact true, but held his peace on the topic. "You were going to say something yesterday," he said instead. "Thought maybe it was something you needed to talk about."

"You're very concerned with my feelings for someone who considers me a demon," Dorian said. "I know what Hissrad means, you realise. I'm sure you don't need my life story if you're planning on having me bound and leashed and sent to Par Vollen as a toy."

He'd found the word, maybe, The Iron Bull thought, but he probably didn't know it was a role, what it involved and didn't involve. Not a discussion he felt that keen on having, anyway. Better to turn the blade and be done. "You said yourself, I'm not Hissrad. You want to be bound and leashed, that works for me, but Par Vollen's got nothing to do with it."

Dorian's brown skin didn't show blushes well, which was a damned shame.

"So long as we're entirely clear," he said, which was, interestingly enough, not a denial.

It was the right moment to press for information, The Iron Bull knew: get in while Dorian was off-balance and flustered.

Dorian seemed to have realised the same thing.

"Besides getting paid," he said, the barest moment before The Iron Bull opened his mouth to speak, "what _are_ you doing here?" The words came out in a rush, a scramble to get in ahead of The Iron Bull. Interesting in itself.

The Iron Bull shrugged. "Getting paid isn't enough?"

"No," Dorian said, thoughtful. "You used to be Hissrad, but you aren't any longer. You're trying to be The Iron Bull, but you don't believe you are. You're a veteran of Seheron wandering the borderlands. I have the feeling that _getting paid_ is at best a gross simplification. I rather think there's a story to you, Ashkaari."

The Iron Bull held onto his self-control, but it was a close-run thing. "Don't," he said, and saw that Dorian flinched at his tone. "You made me give you that name, but you don't call me that. I'm The Iron Bull."

He expected to have to negotiate, give up something more for the pleasure of not having his past dragged up over and over again, but Dorian just winced and said, subdued, "I—I apologise."

"Damn right," The Iron Bull said, and let his shoulders fall, easing the worst of the tension out of them breath by breath.

Dorian sighed and shifted, laid his book aside on the dry grass and settled himself closer to The Iron Bull. It seemed a conscious gesture. The Iron Bull imagined for a moment that he could feel the warmth radiating from his body, but it must only have been the sun.

"To answer your earlier question," Dorian said, "I find myself here because my situation at home is increasingly difficult. I have a role to play, one which is deeply distasteful to me, and I—require space to consider my options."

"What," The Iron Bull said, "not enthusiastic enough about the blood of virgins?"

"Not nearly," Dorian said with a rather sharp laugh, and then, sobering, "and far too interested in—well—I suppose it doesn't matter. My choices so far have been less than acceptable, and I imagine there will eventually be consequences. I suppose being a pariah _does_ go rather well with my dashing good looks." 

This last was accompanied by a sidelong look at The Iron Bull. It seemed coy, as though Dorian couldn't quite decide whether he was flirting or not. As for the rest—well, he'd met people who were better at hiding their shit, but there was something about Dorian that was hard to read all the same.

There was a pull to that. It was attractive, as mysteries often were.

So was Dorian. A high collar that parted at the front to leave his throat temptingly bare, framed and emphasised. His eyes were lined with kohl, the lids very delicately shaded with powder. Those wrinkles at their corners suited him well, especially when he smiled.

The Iron Bull struggled briefly with the urge to try and make him smile again.

"I must say," Dorian said, and he _was_ smiling again now, although The Iron Bull hadn't done a damn thing to cause it. "I wonder what you think of us. Do you believe every story you hear? You seem rather too intelligent a man for that."

This time it was The Iron Bull's turn to be surprised into laughter, and Dorian's smile deepened.

"Really?" The Iron Bull said. "Intelligent, is it? And here I believed all mages from Tevinter made pacts with demons. Which I'm guessing you're going to tell me you don't."

A shadow passed over Dorian's face, but his recovery time was good. "I most certainly don't," he said, mouth twisting in distaste. He brightened. "Next you'll be telling me you believed the one about the cows. Although that one's very nearly true, I suppose, if you care to go on technicalities."

"Cows," The Iron Bull said, trying very hard not to be charmed. " _Damn_. Now you're just fucking with me. Go on, then, tell me the one about the cows."

Dorian laughed, and told him about the cows which had only sort of been flying over Minrathous, and smiled the entire time he was doing so.

The sun was sinking, the light turning warm and golden. The shadows of the trees stretched out until they touched the tips of The Iron Bull's boots. 

"I apologise again," Dorian said. "About your name—I had no idea, when I asked—"

The Iron Bull shrugged. "Forget it," he said. "It's done."

He watched the shadows' advance in silence for a time, and reached a decision. "We don't have names under the Qun," he said, finally. "Got numbers, and titles. But my Tama, she used to call me that. Ashkaari, like—uh—too smart for my own good, probably."

"Oh," Dorian said, a little sound of surprise, and looked for a moment as though he might reach for The Iron Bull, touch him. He began to raise his hand, and faltered, as if he were unused to offering comfort.

Just as well, The Iron Bull thought. He had what he needed now, he shouldn't be getting himself more tangled up in this mess. Next thing, he'd be the one telling elaborate stories about home.

The idea didn't seem so bad.

But it was almost time to go. He got to his feet without being asked this time, picked up his axe, looked around to meet Dorian's eyes in the fading light. 

"Do be careful with that thing of yours," Dorian said, full of righteous but not entirely convincing indignation. "Swinging it around like that, honestly."

"Oh," The Iron Bull said, "you're pretty dirty, huh? I'm always careful. Want to find out?"

Dorian's eyes widened. "Your _weapon_ ," he snapped, but he was not, in fact, looking at The Iron Bull's axe.

"Well, hey," The Iron Bull said, "you change your mind, I'm around."

Dorian looked as though he had a retort ready. But then the sun was gone, and The Iron Bull stood alone in the clearing again.

Back along the path, Vanna was expecting him. Of course she was. She didn't say a word this time, just shrugged and turned away from him, gesturing towards the tent he'd used for the last few nights. No saving fools, probably. Well, he couldn't argue.

 

 

It was a bad night for sleep, although The Iron Bull was quite well used to making do on snatches of rest where he could. This time, sunrise was still some hour or two away when he rose, full of restless energy. The road south-east to Antiva was long, and he had in his mind some idea of making good headway, putting some distance between himself and the borderlands. 

At the crossroads he stood for some time in private conflict, the same one that had held him from sleep. In truth, he knew already what he was going to do. The memory of Dorian's shifting expressions, his surprise and fascination, was too clear.

When he finally turned, it was not south and east, but west, with the river.

In Dorian's clearing, he found himself standing again. Although the walk was not a short one, the sun was only just clearing the tops of the trees, a thin sliver of bright light falling across the westernmost edge of the clearing. Slowly, the flowers opened their petals. 

I'm losing it, The Iron Bull thought.

He bent and picked a flower.

"I rather thought three would have been enough for you," Dorian said.

There was an uncertainty and a strained note to his voice that he almost certainly didn't mean to let show. The Iron Bull straightened up, held the flower to his scarred lips as though to kiss it, breathed in the scent of it. Dorian seemed unable to look away. He was, The Iron Bull noticed, decidedly less groomed today: hair a mess, a bruised look to the skin beneath his eyes.

"Three was enough for my employer," he said, lowering his hand. "One's enough for me."

"I do not appreciate—" Dorian began, heated, and broke off with a sound that was close to a growl, all frustration, low in his throat. "You are _impossible._ "

"You like it," The Iron Bull said, never one to let an opportunity to state an obvious but unwelcome truth slide.

Dorian narrowed his eyes. For a moment, the line of his mouth tightened with some emotion The Iron Bull couldn't quite pin down. "Well?" he said. "And what if I do? Do you simply plan to stand there and—and wave your cock around, or do you have a point with any of this?"

This was a shift. The Iron Bull hadn't entirely expected it; had thought that Dorian wanted him, that he got a secret kick out of the flirting, sure. But this was something else. "Depends," he said, keeping his tone neutral. "You want me to be going somewhere?"

"I want," Dorian said, and swore under his breath. "I want you to believe that I'm not a demon. And I want—"

There were only two paces between them, and Dorian closed them swiftly. There was no gentleness at all to the press of his mouth against The Iron Bull's, nor to the urgent clench of his hands against The Iron Bull's chest, nails digging sharply into skin. A shock, not unpleasant but disorienting. Something had happened between yesterday and today. Some variable The Iron Bull hadn't known to account for.

He groaned. There was an overwhelming intensity to it all: the drag of Dorian's teeth against his lower lip, the desperate pressure of Dorian's lips. Out of nowhere. He brought his hands up to Dorian's side, his back, stroked careful circles there, keeping his touch light, and ignored the urgent roll of Dorian's hips for the moment while he was still figuring out the situation. 

"Hey," he said, "hey, easy there. We've got time."

Dorian panted against him, breath hot at the base of The Iron Bull's throat where he had pressed his face. " _We have time_ , he says. Would you please be so very kind as to get on with it and fuck me already? I am not a terribly patient man."

There was that strain to his voice again, more pronounced now. Need, tangled and twisted up with fear and want.

"Something happened, didn't it," The Iron Bull said.

"I am currently entirely uninterested in—oh—talking about my feelings," Dorian said. He had worked a hand between The Iron Bull's legs, and was occupied with the task of exploring, dragging his fingers along the line of The Iron Bull's cock, pressing, teasing.

Focus despite temptation. Dorian's hands were unsteady, and his breath shuddered. Everything about his urgency said that he was going for a temporary escape, to be held and taken so thoroughly that he couldn't remember why he was afraid, to not have to talk about it, to not do anything but feel. The Iron Bull could probably manage that; he knew the feeling well enough. But he knew, too, that Dorian probably wasn't very interested in minding his own limits at that exact moment. Sex outside the Qun was a messy thing, he had learnt—not that there weren't rules, but people hated spelling them out. That could be fine, it could be a lot of fun, but it worried him sometimes, that kind of chaos. 

Right now, it worried him immensely. The two of them, nothing to anchor them, and all of Dorian's sharp edges on show—

"Right," he said, "right—Dorian—"

Dorian pulled back to look up at him with hazy eyes, and The Iron Bull felt compelled to run his hand up Dorian's back, to stroke carefully over the soft skin of his neck, drag his fingers lightly along Dorian's jaw. Dorian shivered, but his eyes gained focus. 

"Well?" he said, impressively imperious in tone considering the circumstances.

The Iron Bull thought about hostile targets and desires and extracting information, and then about Tamassrans. Needs and clear boundaries and certainties.

"You're going to have to tell me what you need," he said. "You want to play rough or whatever, that's fine, but we set rules first. You don't try to provoke me into hurting you."

"Is that the price?" Dorian said.

The Iron Bull gave him a lopsided smile. "If you like."

"How positively Tevinter of you." Dorian more or less managed to return the smile, although it looked to have cost him. The breath he took before he spoke next was deep and uneven. "I rather hoped—but I—I accept."

The Iron Bull curled his fingers gently under Dorian's chin, tilted his face up a fraction further, just to the edge of strain, and bent to press a chaste kiss to his parted lips. Relief and approval. He felt steadier in himself already.

"Tell me," The Iron Bull said.

"I," Dorian said, and hesitated. Another deep breath, his eyes flickering closed, open again. Resolve through fear. The Iron Bull could respect that. "Fight me. You have to overpower me. Don't stop, even if I—well, just don't stop, I suppose."

"I can do that," The Iron Bull said, though in an all-out fight he really didn't know if he could. He considered the rest. "No weapons. You want to actually stop, you tap out, like this." He tapped the fingers of the hand that wasn't on Dorian's face to his arm, three times. "Or you call an end. My tongue, so I know it's not play. Katoh."

Dorian's mouth moved as he tested the shape of the word in silence. The Iron Bull stroked his knuckles across Dorian's cheek, watched the flutter of Dorian's eyelids at the gesture. He didn't understand it, but there was a need in him to take these moments of quiet closeness and hold them, to remember them through the rest. 

Even as messy and tired as he looked, Dorian was beautiful.

 _I want you to believe I'm not a demon,_ he'd said, and he'd looked so damned lost. The Iron Bull didn't know if he believed it. But oh, part of him wanted to.

"Any more terms?" he said.

"I suppose you'd better let me undress first. I ought to be able to take myself home without causing any more of a scandal than usual." He sounded regretful at that.

"You've been thinking about me ripping your clothes off, haven't you," The Iron Bull said, with a grin, and was pleased when that got a laugh from Dorian. "Hey, lots of people like that. Big, strong hands, tearing your robes right off, laying you bare—"

Dorian was smiling up at him, and this time he was flushed enough for it to show. To feel as well, his skin warming under The Iron Bull's hand. "You're terrible," he said, and sounded fond.

"The worst," The Iron Bull said, and kissed him. Softly—had he meant to kiss him so softly? But Dorian moaned against his lips, a tiny involuntary noise of pleasure, and it was right.

"And," Dorian said, when The Iron Bull pulled back, "you should mark me, but only in places I can hide. I want—" he trailed off.

"What do you want?" The Iron Bull asked, when nothing more followed, and Dorian sighed.

"It doesn't matter. Just let me feel it, if you would."

"Yeah, that's fine," The Iron Bull said, and couldn't resist stealing one more kiss. This time, he could feel Dorian's lips curving into a smile. He was still tense, no missing that, but he'd lost that worst edge of desperation for the moment. Talking had been the right call, The Iron Bull thought, satisfied. He might be a poor substitute for a Tamassran, but he wasn't lost yet. He could still keep hold of himself. Madness would come, but for now—

"How about you strip, then," he said.

Dorian did. His hands fumbled a little over fastenings. So much concentration in his expression that The Iron Bull wanted to kiss him again, take over, tear his clothes off after all. But they had an agreement.

He watched, and he could see Dorian's awareness of his gaze, his arousal, and that was good too.

And then there was just Dorian, standing naked in the sunlight. He was not a slightly built man and, although he'd proven himself more than capable of dealing with The Iron Bull without lifting a finger, he had the look of someone who took care in training his body. The Iron Bull remembered that first impression of him, of a solid physicality, presence.

It had been appealing then, even with his wariness. It was more appealing now. The look Dorian gave him was openly flirtatious - he seemed now unashamed of his interest in the broad bare expanse of The Iron Bull's chest. A good sign.

Between Dorian's legs, his cock was hard.

"You want me naked too?" The Iron Bull asked, and watched with interest as Dorian's cock twitched.

"You can hardly expect me to believe that you consider yourself dressed right now," Dorian said, and then, at a look from The Iron Bull, "boots off, if you would."

There was no way of making an enticing performance out of taking off a leg brace, so The Iron Bull went for efficiency. After a moment's thought, he took his pouch of flowers from his belt and lay that with the rest. 

When he straightened up again, careful of how he placed his weight, he found that Dorian, although still undeniably turned on, was looking at him with some expression of—well— some expression that made it look a lot like he cared. Maybe it was a mistake to talk after all—maybe it would have been easier, simpler, just to fuck, like Dorian had wanted to.

It wouldn't have been. It wouldn't have been what he needed and, more importantly, it wouldn't have been what Dorian needed. But for a moment, in the face of how much he wanted to believe himself the object of Dorian's affection, the thought was there.

"Ready?" he asked.

"I have been ready for _some time_ ," Dorian said.

The Iron Bull thought about Tamassrans again. State a rule and then reinforce it. "And to stop it, if you can't tap out, you say…?"

"Katoh," Dorian said, the word obviously foreign on his tongue.

"Good," The Iron Bull said, and lunged for him.

Dorian didn't slip magically out of the way as he had on that first day. Instead, The Iron Bull's shoulder crashed against his chest, and he turned his body back and sideways with it, reflexes good even with the air punched out of him. The Iron Bull, getting a rough grip on his arm, used the momentum to twist him off balance—tumbled them both down onto the grass, grunting as he landed with Dorian on top of him. 

Dorian was wide-eyed, breathing hard. "You—you brute," he managed, gasped words at odds with the fact that he was grinding insistently down against The Iron Bull's clothed leg. "Oh—that's going to bruise—oh, fuck—"

The Iron Bull drew his knee up to give Dorian a moment of improved contact, and watched in satisfaction as Dorian's lips parted on a moan. Enough of a distraction for The Iron Bull flip them both over. Crushed grass smeared along Dorian's arm.

It made a gorgeous picture: Dorian pinned beneath him, head thrown back against the grass and throat working hard as he swallowed. "Shit," The Iron Bull said. He was breathing hard himself, by now. "You think that's the only bruise you're going to have when I'm done with you?"

He tightened his hands around Dorian's forearms for emphasis, dug in with the blunted tips of his claws, rounded down to a semblance of nails. Dorian hissed in pain, and then laughed, breathless, reckless—arched up against The Iron Bull, the head of his cock dragging damply along The Iron Bull's stomach. 

"Oh," Dorian said, "you and your promises—oh, oh—oh, stop that—harder—"

The Iron Bull, who had released Dorian's arm in favour of yanking his head back with a firm grip on his hair, didn't pull harder, but did bend to bite at the junction of Dorian's neck and shoulder, low enough for his damned collars to hide.

"If you do that again, I will _make you sorry_ ," Dorian said. His voice had gone breathy, and he was still trying insistently to rub his cock against The Iron Bull any way he could. "You—you—"

The Iron Bull pushed himself up on hands and knees, caging Dorian with his whole body, and did it again, sucked and kissed and bit again until there was a dark bruise over Dorian's collar-bone.

Dorian moaned, full-voiced. His hips jerked.

His arm slammed hard into The Iron Bull's elbow.

" _Shit_ ," The Iron Bull said, but his balance was gone, and Dorian was rolling to the side, away and up onto his knees, breathless with laughter. The sound sparked across The Iron Bull's skin, settled hot between his legs. Dorian's expression was bright and defiant, delighted. 

It was dragons The Iron Bull thought of now.

The image would not leave him soon.

It was Dorian who threw himself at The Iron Bull this time, hands clenching hard at the back of his neck; their mouths met, and that was hard too, Dorian's teeth sharp on The Iron Bull's bottom lip. He tasted his own blood, burned with it, all the adrenaline of any good fight and more than the usual amount of arousal. A relief that he hadn't been looking for. But he'd needed it.

This time when The Iron Bull threw Dorian he went down hard, shoulder first onto the ground, but he was quick up again anyway, swinging for The Iron Bull with a closed fist.

The Iron Bull caught his hand at the wrist, and meant to throw him down again, get on top of him, but Dorian twisted and yanked his arm free, came in elbow-first quicker than The Iron Bull would have credited. 

He didn't quite have the strength to knock The Iron Bull back; swore in frustration as The Iron Bull held his ground, twisted and struggled even as The Iron Bull got his arms around him and finally sent him to the grass again, came down on top of him, the full length of their bodies pressed together. 

Dorian's chest was heaving.

The Iron Bull ground down against him. He got the angle just right; his cock pressed to Dorian's, the fabric of his trousers sliding between them. Dorian groaned in frustration, kicking and struggling to try and get more friction. Between them, his fingers twisted around the strap of The Iron Bull's harness, tugging in a useless attempt to steer him in the right direction.

"Fuck," The Iron Bull said. "Fuck, you're hot like this, all messed up and bruised and sweaty. You're so desperate to get off, to feel my cock in you. Nothing's enough, is it."

"Oh, please," Dorian said, although the dismissiveness was ruined by a moan, "you talk as though it doesn't matter either way to you, but you're just as desperate." 

He wasn't wrong, exactly. The Iron Bull could lose himself in this, in Dorian's pleasure, let it echo through him until it was all he knew. He had been made into a weapon, and broken, remade, broken again. To become a tool for another's satisfaction, if only for a few hours—it wouldn't be so bad. In that moment he wanted it, yearned for it with an unexpected heat. 

Ashkaari had always tried to look out for the other imekari. To understand what they needed. Hissrad had tried, at times, not to see. 

He had failed again and again.

"Can you blame me?" The Iron Bull said, sliding a hand up Dorian's side, making sure to graze over a nipple with his thumb. When he shuddered it was equal parts desire and memory. "Gorgeous man like you, all strong and powerful, trying to beg for my cock without begging for it? That's enough to get anyone worked up."

Dorian arched against him, his feet struggling for purchase on the grass. The sounds he was making were incoherent, fragmented. The Iron Bull paid close attention to them for anything that might be Qunlat, but heard nothing of the sort.

He pressed his hand up, forcing Dorian's resisting arm off his chest and up above his head, pinning him by the wrist; repeated the motion with his other hand, stretching Dorian out, holding him in place; saw the widening of Dorian's eyes as he tried and failed to resist. He lay engulfed in The Iron Bull's shadow, lips parted, staring up at him.

The Iron Bull smiled. "Yield?" he asked, his voice rough. 

Dorian's lip curled. He tried to drag his arms free, testing The Iron Bull's hold. 

It was, The Iron Bull found, taking in Dorian's expression, still possible for him to get even more turned on. 

His cock ached. He could just—if Dorian would just—

"Why on _earth_ should I—do that—" Dorian said, the last words wavering as The Iron Bull bent to kiss his neck, to bite at it, catching at the edges of the bruises he'd already left, compelled to get close enough to Dorian to breathe in the smell of him.

"Oh, I don't know," The Iron Bull said, close against Dorian's ear, and felt how Dorian shivered. "Maybe because you're not getting a damn thing more until you do?"

"Am I not?" Dorian said, and The Iron Bull thrilled to hear the slyness in his tone, the playfulness even as he fought. And he _was_ fighting, feet braced on the ground, shoving up hard with his full body against The Iron Bull's hold. 

It wasn't enough to shift him, but The Iron Bull let it happen. Not a mercy for Dorian but an urge to make him keep working at it, to throw him around and see how he loved it. They tumbled sideways together, Dorian laughing for one triumphant moment as he came up on top of The Iron Bull, gasping again in the next as The Iron Bull kept the roll going, threw Dorian and followed over to kneel above him.

Under The Iron Bull's hand, Dorian's throat moved urgently. He flexed his fingers, let Dorian feel the scrape of his claws, the weight of his palm—not pressure so much as potential. Against The Iron Bull's wrist, Dorian's fingers clenched ineffectually, the nails biting hard into The Iron Bull's skin.

He was not trying to pull The Iron Bull's hand away, and he seemed not even to realise that his hips were moving restlessly, thrusting in little urgent circles up against The Iron Bull. Dorian's cock pressed up against The Iron Bull's balls. He looked completely overcome.

"Yield," The Iron Bull said, and this time it had the sharpness of a command.

" _Fuck,_ " Dorian gasped. "Fuck, fuck, I yield—fuck me—"

  
  


He still cried out in protest at the loss of The Iron Bull's hand. The Iron Bull, hurrying to get himself out of his clothes, fumbled at the sight of Dorian pressing shaking fingers to his own throat. Swore fervently, and, kicking his trousers out of the way, grabbed Dorian by the shoulders to pull him up and kiss him.

The messy press of their mouths only added to the urgency growing between them.

Dorian's hands came up to clutch at his forearms. The slide of his tongue against The Iron Bull's was dizzying. The Iron Bull's chest was tight with want.

"Come on," he muttered against Dorian's lips. "Hey, come on, work with me here. Let me take care of you."

Dorian groaned, leaned in for another kiss before submitting to The Iron Bull's attempts to rearrange them, settling them with Dorian in his lap, Dorian's back pressed to his chest, his hands looking huge against Dorian's chest and stomach.

He pressed his hands experimentally across Dorian's skin. He could feel every movement and gasp and shiver, through his palms, through his chest.

"You still in there?" he asked.

Dorian only nodded, leant his head back against The Iron Bull's shoulder, eyes closed in bliss. It'd be an incredible expression to see properly, The Iron Bull thought. But it was good enough in glances, in profile. 

He kept watch on Dorian's face as he slid his left hand back to Dorian's throat. A careful press. A curl of the fingers. 

Dorian's lips parted, and The Iron Bull felt the breath shudder out of him, but he hardly made a sound. A whine, on the edge of hearing.

"Easy," The Iron Bull said, and felt as though he was trying to soothe both of them. His free hand stroked over Dorian's stomach, the slight softness there, the flex of muscles beneath. A little lower, his fingers brushing through dark hair, neatly trimmed, his claws teasing at the skin just above Dorian's cock.

" _Please,_ " Dorian said.

"Hm," The Iron Bull said, "I don't know about that." That he closed his hand around Dorian's cock as he said it may have sent slightly mixed signals; it certainly persuaded a laugh out of Dorian, breathless and unsteady as the sound was. That was good. Relaxed was good, laughing was good. And desperate for pleasure was a hell of a lot better than just desperate.

The Iron Bull flexed his fingers—around Dorian's cock, around his throat. It was hard to say which it was that made Dorian moan and writhe the most. It wasn't going to take much to get him off now. It wasn't going to take much for The Iron Bull, either, if it came to that.

He ground up against Dorian's arse, his cock sliding along the cleft of it, and Dorian moaned at that too, pushed his hips back into it, spine arching. That pushed him up against The Iron Bull's hand on his throat, and the sound he made then sounded like a sob.

"Fuck, that's hot," The Iron Bull said; growled, really. He stroked Dorian's cock, squeezed and fondled it, pressed his thumb to the head and rubbed little circles over it, the motion smoothed by the precome gathering there. Stroked again, again, firm and slow. "Fuck. Come on, Dorian—yeah, that's it, like that—you're so gorgeous—"

Dorian was tensing under his hands, his hips moving erratically. The Iron Bull, extrapolating from the available evidence, pressed down against his throat a little harder, just enough to make breathing an effort. Dorian did sob then, his whole body jerking against The Iron Bull's hold as he came apart, spilling over The Iron Bull's fingers, his thighs.

The Iron Bull held him through it, and then through the little shivery aftershocks that followed; stroked the sweaty mess of his hair back from his forehead and pressed soft kisses to his shoulder, the side of his neck. He remembered, then, the urge to kiss Dorian he'd felt before they began. The strange sweetness of it. He had the same feeling now, even coloured as it was by his own arousal.

It was not what he had expected madness to feel like. He had expected something fierce and red.

He had expected it to feel like a loss.

Dorian, still unsteady, turned his face up towards The Iron Bull's, and there was nothing for it but to give in and kiss him, awkward angle and all—Dorian's mouth moving languid and soft against his. A tender thing. 

Together, with a little effort, they managed to turn Dorian in The Iron Bull's lap, to settle him so they were chest to chest, slow messy kisses blending into one another until the heat it spread through him became too much to take. Then he lay Dorian down in the grass and leant over him, and kissed him again; stroked himself, his hand still slick with Dorian's come. After a moment, Dorian's hand joined his, light touches, unfocused—but after everything else it was more than enough.

With a ragged groan against Dorian's lips, The Iron Bull came; he had not felt it building, and he could not have held it off. There was a terrifying intensity to it, as though it had been torn from him. But Dorian was there, touching him, moaning as The Iron Bull's come fell across his stomach and chest. He watched The Iron Bull through the whole, stared up at him as though he could memorise every detail, until The Iron Bull, far beyond the point of denying himself, could do nothing but take up kissing him again.

They lay together for a time, drowsy in the sun, settling back into themselves. The Iron Bull ached, and Dorian must be feeling his bruises. But there was a comfort to it: the simple closeness.

Sooner or later, they would have to clean up, The Iron Bull thought. Probably sooner.

But it was Dorian who broke the silence.

"You," he said, a hand reaching out to touch The Iron Bull's face, "are unbelievable." It sounded like an endearment.

It also sounded sad.

"Hey," The Iron Bull said. "You doing alright?"

"Just now, I doubt I could be better," Dorian said. He was still smiling, and he still didn't sound happy. "I should go."

"Not like that," The Iron Bull said, and knew that he was stalling for time, against all reason. "Come on, let's get you down to the river, clean you up."

Dorian hesitated, seemed to realise the state he was in: bruised and sweaty, smeared with dirt and come and crushed grass. "I suppose I could consent to that," he said, and it was a good try at humour.

The Iron Bull helped him to his feet, saw that he winced when he straightened out his back, and that he was favouring his right leg. But Dorian seemed not to mind the discomfort. In fact he was probing curiously at his arm with ungentle fingers, testing the soreness of all the marks.

"Satisfied?" The Iron Bull said, smiling at him, and for a moment Dorian smiled back at him without that shadow of sadness. But it faded quickly.

"Ever so," he said.

The Iron Bull sat him down by the water's edge. Cleaning both of them up with scraps of cloth was a slow process, and he had no wish to hurry it; he allowed them this, a few more gentle touches. 

"I won't be back," Dorian said, very softly.

It was no surprise.

The Iron Bull didn't let his hands falter, just kept cleaning Dorian's chest with careful swipes. "Going to tell me why?" he asked.

"I did something foolish—no, more foolish than this." Dorian sighed. He seemed very interested in The Iron Bull's hands, or at least in not meeting his eyes. "I have for some months been engaged to a very beautiful young woman. Or I was, I suppose. As of last night, I am not, to the disappointment of the rest of House Pavus. I will be very much preoccupied with the consequences of my choice."

The Iron Bull knew a gross understatement when he heard one. But if Dorian didn't want to do details then he didn't. And in fact Dorian seemed disinclined to say anything else at all.

Finally the pretense of washing had been drawn out as far as it would take them.

"Thank you," Dorian said, "for—unexpected consideration."

He stood and gathered his clothes, began to dress, turned away.

"You needn't wait out the rest of the day," he said, fixing a final buckle. All The Iron Bull's marks were, in fact, hidden. "There's no debt left between us."

"Dorian," The Iron Bull said, and Dorian turned to him, questioning. But there was nothing else to say. He could only look.

"Oh, please," Dorian said. "Don't concern yourself with me. I'm sure you're far more likely to get yourself in trouble than I could ever hope to be."

I could kiss you again and ask you to let me help, The Iron Bull thought. Utterly irrational.

The thought came too late. Dorian had already turned again, and stepped between the trees, and vanished.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The art for this chapter is by [Jay](http://dinojay.tumblr.com); view it on tumblr [here](http://dinojay.tumblr.com/post/128344260995/the-iron-bull-smiled-yield-he-asked-his-voice)!


	2. Meetings on the Road

The Iron Bull dressed himself slowly, and sat for a long time in silence, alone with the memory of Dorian, aching in his joints and muscles, in his chest. The sound of the forest closed in around him, as though a barrier had fallen away. The warmth of the sun, which had been pleasant, grew oppressive.

It was not yet late, and he had time to make a start along the south road; he would have to sleep rough, probably, but the nights were not cold. 

He already knew he would not take that route. There was an unpleasant hollowness to the idea. The wrong sort of emptiness. He thought of Dorian's unhappy smile, and of the strange, desperate need to kiss him, to offer to save him. If that was how it was to be—well, where better to be mad than in Tevinter?

West, then.

Once before in his life, The Iron Bull had begun walking and not looked back. The streets of Seheron had been quiet in the early morning, in readiness for violence, and he had left behind him a neat desk, reports carefully filed and labeled, notes on developing situations in a pile for his successor. A note, too, for his reeducators, left in an empty bedroom: I choose not to be. They'd been keeping watch on him when he went back to active duty, he knew, but apparently it hadn't been a very close watch. Nobody had stopped him.

This time, he had nothing to leave, and no-one to give any parting words to. It was easier, and harder.

He picked up his axe, and checked the pouch at his belt, and he walked.

 

 

The border was not a definite thing, more a broad belt of thinning forest, beyond the limits of the lands the Vashoth kept to. Few people lived there, and The Iron Bull moved carefully, found shelter wherever he could. A rocky overhang or the broad trunk of a fallen tree, collecting undergrowth. He moved on routine, and thought as little as possible. Memory found him all the same. Dorian arching beneath him. The look on his face in the moment before he turned away. Other, bloodier things.

For days he saw no people, and no demons either, but held himself in readiness at all times. He would need people, he was aware. Of Tevinter he had little direct knowledge, although he had met more than enough of its inhabitants. A map would be a good start, some information. But he wanted to pick the people, and the moment.

It did not come in any way he might have expected.

The village was well-kept, old stone houses surrounded by green meadows, far healthier in appearance than any others he'd passed by. There was a tavern of some kind; that it was named The Arishok's Head wasn't the most encouraging start, but The Iron Bull liked to think he could pass for an optimist if pressed hard enough. That the sign was a painted wooden board and not anything more literal helped.

The yelling began right before he pushed the door open. There was the clatter of a bench toppling. If he had heard the sound of weapons and armour in time he might not have opened the door at all, but he caught these warnings a moment too late.

He had thought that perhaps a bar fight would give him the chance to get a read on the place before he was the centre of its attention, despite the horns, but in fact, what he walked in on was not a bar fight in the way he'd expected at all.

A boy was sprawled on the floor, his feet caught by the bench. Soldier, The Iron Bull thought, or had been. Out of uniform, but the sword at his belt was standard issue, and all the fastenings were correct, Seheron all over, the kinds worn by poor shits who were only there to be cut down while some damned mage got time to cast. He looked terrified. 

That the people who'd sent the boy tumbling were soldiers there could be no doubt. Their armour gleamed. The crowd made space around them. Six of them, four with swords, two with flails, all with knives. The Iron Bull didn't like the two at the front. The kind who enjoyed fighting too much, out looking for excuses, dragging the others along with them. A deserter was a good excuse. The Iron Bull knew a thing or two about that. He also knew a thing or two about unfair fights. Flames and children, a shopkeeper caught in an assassination attempt, people trying to get on with their lives. Kids who weren't suited for a job but were forced into it until they broke.

You saved what you could.

The Iron Bull moved on instinct, realised what he was doing and let the impulse carry him anyway. The heavy clink of chain snapping taut, and a flail swung a heavy arc. It could crush some poor kid's head, but the Bull's skull was thicker.

He did try to get his axe up to deflect; he wasn't that damn keen on making a shield of himself. Too slow, too slow. But a close thing.

The chain caught on the corner of his blade, jerking the head of the flail off course, not squarely into the Bull's face but a glancing blow, off to his left.

He gritted his teeth against the pain, but bellowed with it anyway, staggering. His axe to the floor to take his weight, the flail pulled with it and clattering away across the floor. How bad? Blood ran hot down his face, and the pain went on and on, raw and deep. When he tried to open his left eye there was only darkness, his field of vision narrowed, shit, shit—

No, no time for that. It was done.

He forced himself up, back straight, to stare the soldiers down with the eye that was still following orders. Behind him, the boy was moving, scrambling to his feet. Up but with laboured breathing - maybe they cracked a rib or two when they threw him down, or maybe he'd just been badly winded. There was a temptation there to look, check up on him. 

The Iron Bull kept his attention fixed forward.

"This one's ours, beast," one of the soldiers said—the one who liked fighting and hadn't had a swing at him yet. "Out of the way!"

The pain pulsed through him with the rhythm of a battle-chant. How easy it would be, to take it and turn it to rage, cut down everyone before him. He had done it before, taken it and used it to keep himself alive and fighting with a dagger between his ribs. But once it had taken him instead, and that was something he could never allow himself to forget.

He took a deep breath through the nose, and saw how they flinched back from him, the savage giant they couldn't knock down. Sure, he could fight them. But he wondered how the shit he was going to get through this without hurting any of the people around them.

It was Dorian who saved him. A memory of sunlight warm against brown skin, the exasperation on his face. _Laws are very dull things_ , indeed.

"He's mine," The Iron Bull said, with no greater hope than buying time for people to get out. "You wanted him to pay a price? I've paid it for him in blood."

They hesitated. Of course they did: he was considerably taller than them, and covered in his own blood, and smirking.

"Oh, you think you can play at the Magisters' games, do you?" the soldier said. He lacked conviction, but he wasn't completely cowed; there was something of a sneer to his words. "Well, I tell you this: it's not blood we're here for. It's a life."

The Iron Bull was good at looming; the horns really helped. He used it to full advantage now, lifted his axe, made a show of adjusting his grip on it. "I guess I can make you a new offer, then," he said. "I'd say my blood and his life are worth more than all your useless lives put together, but I'm not unreasonable. I'm willing to make the trade. He lives, you live."

Their audience had mostly cleared out. The Iron Bull was pretty sure he could take the six of them if he got it over with quickly. It wouldn't be pretty, and he'd go down hard when he was done, but he could do it.

The soldiers considered, sharing uneasy looks, and The Iron Bull planned his attack. The mouthy one should go down first, in range for one good swing; knock his now lightly armed companion back into the two behind him to slow them down, and then—

"We accept the exchange," the mouthy one said, and he looked like the words had a foul taste. "Our lives. We're going."

"Damn right you are," The Iron Bull said, and kept his axe raised as they left. They were whispering urgently amongst themselves, and he'd normally be able to pick up on what they were saying, but only fragments made it past the roaring in his ears, _border_ and _not worth_ and _already fucked._

The door swung heavily closed behind them. "Shit, right," The Iron Bull said, letting his axe fall at last. "That's that. You're safe. You alright?" 

He meant to turn to the boy, check up on him, but he felt too heavy to move, the pain rushing back in over him. His head was spinning.

"Oh, for crying out loud, don't make me carry you," someone said behind him, but his knees had already given out.

 

 

The eye was unsalvageable. He'd known it already, really, but there it was, laid out for him by the exasperated old woman the boy he'd rescued had fetched. "Frankly," she said, "I can't believe you didn't lose more than the eye. Look, there's simply nothing I can do. I've cleaned it and bandaged it, but I'm no mage. You're going to have to be careful with it. If you're very lucky, the wound might not go bad. I can't imagine what you were thinking."

"Oh?" The Iron Bull said, with all the humour he could find. "You believe I can think, then?"

"Don't be ridiculous," she said sharply. "I've patched up more than a few Vashoth in my time, young man. I'm not afraid of you."

Her Common tended towards Nevarran in dialect, a melody he'd heard only rarely and never this far north. Her white hair was clipped short and practical, and she had a face that would be severe if she stopped smiling. She had stories to tell, this one. The Iron Bull wondered if she had anyone to tell them to.

"Not as young as I'd like," he said, and her eyes went to the scars on his chest, the brace on his leg. The missing fingertips.

"No," she said. "I see that. Young enough, all the same."

He laughed, hid the flare of pain the movement sparked. "What, to be a fool? Ah, no-one's too old for that."

"Not that. But never mind. Cremisius says you saved him, and that his life is yours. I'd thank you to treat it well."

"Now, mother," Cremisius said, "don't talk like you know me well. I'm just passing through here, same as him."

She shrugged. "I'm glad enough for anyone to be treated well in this Maker-forsaken country. Here, try to stand, you can't stay sitting there." She extended her hand to The Iron Bull, who looked at it sceptically, but went to take it—would have missed, if she hadn't allowed for his clumsiness. Her grip was strong, her skin smooth with age.

The Iron Bull tried not to feel annoyed. It was his own weakness, and not on her. Better be careful, though, he thought. Swinging an axe like this was going to take some practice.

"Upstairs," Cremisius said. "I've got a room, need to clear my stuff out. We can talk there. Thanks again, Sophia. I can manage the lecture myself."

The Iron Bull followed him up the stairs, turned a little sideways to deal with the narrow space, and into a room which was strictly speaking much too small to hold both of them and all of its furniture. 

"Right," Cremisius said, and closed the door heavily. "Are you going to tell me what the shit you were thinking now?"

"Oh, I don't know," said The Iron Bull, who hadn't really been thinking very clearly at all. "What should I have been thinking? Hey, look, some guy's going to get his head crushed, let's watch the show?"

Cremisius was older than he'd seemed at first, now that The Iron Bull could get a good look at him. Aqun-athlok, maybe, or what the hell ever humans called that, binding under his torn shirt, a fighter's posture. But not a boy at all, for all he'd seemed at first glance to have boyish features; he must be in his late twenties at least, his body filled out and sturdy, no adolescent softness to his face. No softness to his expression right now either. He might be of an age with Dorian.

"You have no idea who I am. You're a Qunari in Tevinter. You'll get yourself killed, you know, or enslaved."

The Iron Bull shrugged. "I knew I didn't like _them_ , anyway," he said. "That not enough?"

Cremisius snorted, but his expression relaxed a fraction. "Not nearly. But I guess you did it anyway. What now?"

"You want to repay me, you give me information," The Iron Bull said. "I'm guessing you're headed for the border?"

"Smart man, for a suicidal idiot." Cremisius looked up at him. "I _was_ heading for the border, anyway. Get out, find work hitting stuff. Not much of a plan, I admit. Some idiot claimed my life to save it, anyway, so here I am. At your service, apparently."

"You should still get out," The Iron Bull said. "I've got some contacts, they can set you up with a place in a mercenary company working the Free Marches or something. I'd give you a job myself, but I'd be a shitty boss." 

"That's a generous offer," Cremisius said, "but the thing is, I owe you more than information's going to cover, especially if you're planning to get me a job as well. And you're clearly not used to this place. You're going to fuck whatever it is you're trying to do here up if I leave you alone. Uh—what _are_ you doing here?"

The Iron Bull considered his options, the degrees of truth and omission available to him. But the fact was, Cremisius was right: he didn't know where he was going, and he was going to get into trouble if he kept having to corner people for information, however careful he was about it.

"There's a mage I need to find," he said. "I'm going to Minrathous."

The look on Cremisius' face was absolutely incredible. Stating the truth would've been worth it for that alone. "You're going to _Minrathous_ ," he repeated.

"Yeah," The Iron Bull said.

Cremisius seemed lost for words.

"Look," The Iron Bull said, "I'm not poking holes in your damn unplanned attempt at deserting. Work with me here."

"Uh," Cremisius said. "Right. Perfectly reasonable. A Qunari, travelling alone to the other side of Tevinter. Sure. Sounds good. I'm sure you won't be murdered or start a war."

"Not Qunari," The Iron Bull said. He felt suddenly tired, his ruined eye throbbing painfully despite the elfroot. "I'm Tal-Vashoth."

Cremisius rolled his eyes. "Oh, well, that's different then."

"You always backtalk people who save your life this much?" The Iron Bull asked. 

"Always backtalk everyone this much," Cremisius said. "Bad habit for a soldier, I guess, but that didn't work out anyway."

"No shit."

Cremisius sighed. "Look, they found out I was keeping my spare socks in my smalls, which is apparently against regulations. Do you want help with your ridiculous plan or not?"

"Yeah," The Iron Bull said, after a heavy moment of consideration. "Yeah, fine, I do. Stupid of you to offer, though. You don't know me."

"You don't know me, and that didn't stop you," Cremisius pointed out. "But that's the right answer, anyway. Now how about some proper introductions?"

 

 

Cremisius led them south-west, skirting the towering grey bulk of the Hundred Pillars through woodland, trees broken here and there by farms. These were not the dense forests of the borderlands, but they were wild enough, and sparsely populated. They saw no people on the road before the evening of the first day.

"Proper supplies from Marothius," Cremisius said. "And you should get that eye looked at again. Then to the Imperial Highway."

The Iron Bull let him lead; let him talk his way through a deal with a farmer for blankets and food, too, waiting up on the road. "It's not that people here don't see Vashoth," Cremisius told him, "but they'll rip you off every time. Let me talk."

He came back with everything he'd set out to get, and coin to spare; a heavy earthenware flask, too, of what turned out to be ale.

"Shit," The Iron Bull said. "If I was hiring, I really would give you a job."

"You start a mercenary company, I'll be your second," Cremisius said. "If you don't get us both killed in Minrathous, anyway."

"I'll drink to that," The Iron Bull said, although in fact the idea held its own kind of fear. Not only Cremisius but a couple of dozen others, all ready to be dragged down. But it'd probably never happen. Surviving Minrathous was a pretty big if.

They drank from battered metal cups. The ale tasted decent, but too weak, probably watered down. 

The woods darkened around them, and the air began to cool. Night insects creaked and buzzed around them, unseen.

"A mage, huh," Cremisius said. "There's a story there."

The Iron Bull had already been thinking of Dorian, felt the pull of him as the ocean felt the moons, not constantly but inevitably. Shok ebasit hissra, he thought. But Hissrad he had been, and struggled. He was not struggling, now, against this. Funny, when he'd finally left the Qun behind, years separating him from acceptance of purpose and position.

"Yeah," he said. "You could say that."

"They have a name?" Cremisius asked.

The Iron Bull shrugged. "Dorian Pavus."

He did not entirely anticipate the effect that this name had on Cremisius, who seemed momentarily stunned, staring at The Iron Bull with his mouth slightly open.

"Dorian _Pavus_. You're looking for Dorian Pavus."

"You know him?"

"Me?" Cremisius said. "Fuck no, I'm just regular people and he's Court. Altus. Know of him, though. There are stories. The fall of House Pavus is a pretty popular topic. He's the only son, and he won't take anything seriously, won't marry the girl, all that shit. There's plenty call him deviant. I wouldn't know about that, though. People call all kinds of things deviant."

The Iron Bull snorted, tucked away the worry he felt for Dorian to be dealt with later, an ache stored deep in his chest. "Like keeping your spare socks in your smalls."

"Like that, yeah."

They drank, took more, drank again.

"This place is messed up," The Iron Bull said, thinking of Cremisius forced to hide to do what suited him, of Dorian's conflicted, tangled relationship to his own desires. Scorched earth policies in Seheron, and dull-eyed slaves trailing behind Magisters, and children dying.

"Sure," Cremisius said. "But you're Tal-Vashoth. Come from somewhere pretty messed up yourself, right?"

"It's not," The Iron Bull started, on the dangerous edge of real anger. He took a sharp breath, pulled himself back with an effort. "Ah, sure. I guess you're kind of right. Seheron was a mess, anyway."

"You were on Seheron," Cremisius said. "Of course you were. Shit."

They considered the situation in silence, two deserters from opposite sides of the same drawn-out conflict. 

"Over ten years," The Iron Bull said. "I was done with it by nine and a half."

It was more than he'd spoken aloud of his past since he'd left. It felt—less than he'd expected, the outline of someone else's life. Bellowing in rage and pain on the floor of a bloody jungle stronghold, a silent walk up to the offices of the reeducators to be put back together and given a new assignment, something far from that shithole of an island.

But he had been too valuable a Hissrad, and the Qun had made its demands. He had resumed his post. Gatt had watched him so anxiously. 

He hoped the kid was doing alright.

They finished up their drinks in silence, and bedded down. Cremisius had this in his favour: he knew when to let a line of conversation drop. 

 

 

"Alright," The Iron Bull said. "Again! You can do better than that."

Cremisius cursed with conviction. "Come off it. You miss the block three times out of five, you want me to give you another scar?"

" _Again_ ," The Iron Bull said. "We're doing this until I've got it, unless you want me to go down the next time we get into a real fight."

"Ugh," Cremisius said. "Fine, fine. Just so long as you're not planning on swinging that axe at me any time soon."

"I'll practice axe work on a tree," The Iron Bull said. "It's more likely to try and dodge."

Cremisius rolled his eyes, and came at him, and got past his guard again, the flat of his sword bruising against The Iron Bull's ribs.

The Iron Bull had already known that it would be hard work to fight with only one eye. It was hard enough to move around, his life turned suddenly into an exercise in hiding his mistakes, catching himself before he could overbalance when he'd thought to lean against a fence, adjusting his reach when he went to pick up a bottle. But it was more frustrating than he'd imagined. He might as well be an imekari again, learning forms that his muscles didn't yet remember the shape of. He'd probably been able to land a more reliable hit even then.

They had their routines, all the same. A hard day's march, training, drinks and sleep. Cremisius was a good travelling companion, never reverent but always ready to respect a boundary, tidy enough and well able to keep pace. How long had it been since The Iron Bull had shared a drink with someone else like this? 

He knew the answer: Seheron, as it always was. Gatt and the rest, drinking and laughing. They had been comrades, and they had understood one another, for all they argued.

Surprising, to feel the echo of that understanding with some runaway 'vint. But then again, the world was already well on its way to escaping entirely from his understanding. If he was planning to dedicate himself to saving the son of a Magister, then anything was possible.

Madness.

But his course was set. He held the memory of Dorian's smile, his brilliant laughter, breathless and unsteady with lust; hoped, without fully understanding why, to see him smile again. What would he think about The Iron Bull's eye?

 

 

Marothius sweltered under the sun, dusty and unwelcoming. This far from the sea, the heat was unrelenting, the air still. The Iron Bull thought of the farmland they'd passed through, dry soil, wilting plants. The harvest might well fail this year, for a large part of this area. Would the Magisters do anything? Would they care? "You wait," Cremisius said. "The highway'll take us near the edge of the Silent Plains. That'll be a _real_ treat."

The Iron Bull offered only a grunt of disgust in response. He was on edge in the city, surrounded by the strange feeling of the magic of Tevinter, all-pervasive, unsettling like nails on glass. Cremisius herded him around, sat him down to be prodded ungently by a healer, fresh bandages and a metal patch to hold them in place. A stern lecture about cleanliness, a disapproving tut at the state of his brace. He declined to let the man take a proper look at his leg, but submitted to the application of a pungent paste to his face with only a few complaints.

"You should live," the healer said, "though the scarring around the socket will be considerable." The Iron Bull, who was quite fond of scars, shrugged and handed over his coin as a fair price for being allowed to escape.

Cremisius was satisfied that they were set with supplies by the time The Iron Bull found him again. He'd also swapped out his army sword for a heavy maul. 

"You decide you needed something you could actually reach my head with, Cremisius?" The Iron Bull said, and Cremisius laughed.

"Let's try it, shall we?"

"Aw, I thought you'd never ask," The Iron Bull said, cuffing him across the shoulder with some amount of affection. "You're the best. Come on, Krem de la Krem, let's get out of town so we can have a good fight."

"Krem de la Krem? Should've known you'd be a jester. The trousers were the first clue."

The Iron Bull took this with good grace as a completely fair comment. But he didn't let the nickname go. Good nicknames were important.

 

 

He was glad to get out of Marothius, away from the magic in the air, the slaves who bought and sold goods for their masters in the markets. Maybe Dorian was at home in places like that; an uncomfortable thought, prickling across his shoulders, spreading tension. A mage from Tevinter. In a clearing in a forest, it was easy to forget what that might mean.

Krem seemed to relax beyond the town walls too, and the routine took over again, easier than it ought to have been. 

The land only grew drier, trees giving way almost entirely to scrub, all thorny bushes and long rustling grass. Herds of some beast The Iron Bull couldn't with any certainty identify roamed in the distance, kicking up dust in great clouds as they went, but they met none up close. 

"We can maybe catch a ride with a caravan up the highway," Krem said, when he judged they were finally closing in on that ancient road. "Should be plenty going to Vol Dorma. Maybe a few headed all the way up to Minrathous. But it'll be risky to travel too far with any one group. People'll start asking questions. You don't look anything like the Vashoth merchants we usually see. They wear shirts, for a start."

"There are Vashoth here?" The Iron Bull asked, surprised.

"There are all sorts here," Krem said. "You don't have to be an elf to get dragged into the Magisters' bullshit. Most of them probably have parents who came from Seheron."

Some must be from the borderlands. The stories Vanna had told—well, he'd have liked to entertain the hope that Tevinter wasn't as bad as the stories. But thinking of Gatt and Seheron, he knew it was worse. The wildest imaginings of some secluded group of Vashoth hunters couldn't touch the true extent of it. The whole place was all wrong, full of magic that was tainted with blood, old powers whispering in the depths. And in the heart of it, someone to save.

 

 

Conversation:

"They wanted me to marry," Krem said, staring into the fire. "I guess it would've brought money in, but—shit, I couldn't. Wearing dresses and—"

He shook his head.

"You're no tamassran," The Iron Bull said. "Have to be thick as shit not to see that. Uh, no offense."

Silence. Maybe a step over a line. He didn't really get how humans did these things, not in all the messy details. He'd learnt in fragments. Need to know. 

But Krem's shoulders relaxed, and he quirked a smile, if only for a moment.

"My father's a slave now," Krem said at last, sighed, hands scrubbing at his face. "Sold himself to some magister over Neromenian way. Meant to be a decent sort, as Magisters go, but—I guess people change. People change here, anyway. Wake up one morning like a whole different person or something."

The Iron Bull thought of Tal-Vashoth. One day a friend and the next a savage. But even if he'd like to think of that like a switch, he knew it wasn't. The slow build of pressure, one bad fight after another.

"That's messed up," he said, and Krem didn't seem to have anything but a shrug to offer in response.

But for all their pitfalls, talks with Krem late at night were a relief. Get tired enough, drink just enough to take the worst edge of tension off, and sometimes he could drift off without an hour of thinking about Dorian, some dizzying mix of memory and fantasy and fear holding him from the edge of sleep. A person he hardly even knew, who he had slept with once. But here he was. 

That neither the memories nor the fantasies were exclusively sexual wasn't any kind of reassurance at all. 

 

 

It was in the town by the Imperial Highway that The Iron Bull walked into the middle of a fight for the second time since crossing the border. He really hadn't planned on it, of course; he'd been waiting out of the way for Krem to decide if there was anyone it was safe for them to try and hitch a ride with, wandering through the noisy covered market that nestled between ancient stone buildings. So many people were shouting to begin with that he didn't catch the fight starting for all he was on guard, and consequently he was almost on top of it before he knew it was happening.

An elf had a knife to a stall-keeper's throat. Dark hair untidily hacked off at jaw length, eyes narrowed in anger, a face that managed to give every impression of sharpness despite its actual form. "Say that once more." Southern, The Iron Bull thought. Alienage by birth, and not a slave. He was already stepping forward, although he didn't know what it was in his power to do.

"No, please don't," a different voice said, lilting. "We're quite alright, thank you, we'll be no more trouble to you if you just—Skinner, please—"

This second speaker was also an elf. The vallaslin on her face were a faded green, and on her back was a staff, although some attempt had been made at disguising the fact. Blonde hair fell to one shoulder. At present, it was a tangled mess. She had the look of someone who hadn't slept well for some time.

They made an odd pair, but probably no odder than him and Krem. They were also doing a pretty good job of getting themselves into deep shit.

An all-out fight in here would be a mess. People everywhere.

What the fuck, The Iron Bull thought, and plunged right in, using his full bulk to his advantage. It was this that distracted both the stall-keeper and the elf identified as Skinner from their quarrel for long enough to let Skinner's companion pull her back, hissing urgently in her ear.

"There a problem here?" The Iron Bull said.

Skinner stared up at him, unimpressed. "He wanted to know who my master was. I'm going to kill him."

"No, she isn't," her companion said. "It's a joke. Very funny. You might as well say I'm a mage. Which I'm not."

"Damn right she isn't going to kill him," The Iron Bull said. "You don't just kill people for free, you'll take the bottom right out the market if you keep going like that. Come on, I've been looking all over for you two. Krem's found us a job."

The look he got from Skinner was one of blank incomprehension, but he saw understanding spark in the other elf's eyes. "Right, right. Sorry to keep you waiting, chief. Come along, Skinner, let's go, you know how Krem hates to be held up."

Skinner stared up at him, and The Iron Bull stared back down, impassive. Finally, she shrugged, twirled her knife and sheathed it without breaking eye contact. "Let's go."

"Hey," the stall-keeper said, finally catching up, although he still didn't seem to be able to look away from the upturned tips of The Iron Bull's horns. "Hey, wait, you can't just—"

"What," The Iron Bull said, "you actually wanted to die?"

He'd managed to get his two new charges to the market entrance before the man found his voice enough to start yelling for the guard.

 

 

"So let me get this straight," Krem said. "You went to the market to run an impromptu recruitment drive for the mercenary company you don't have? Is that what happened?"

The Iron Bull sighed. "I went to the market looking for those sugar cookies, you know? The really tiny ones."

Krem gave him a look.

"They were going to get themselves killed," The Iron Bull said.

"You," Krem said, "are the one who's going to get yourself killed. You're going to Minrathous to find an infamous mage, for reasons you haven't even shared, and you _can't stop trying to save people's lives on the way._ You are, without a doubt, the most ridiculous man I've ever met."

Gatt used to say that too, fond exasperation managing to push through the rage for a few minutes at a time. Dorian had called him impossible and meant five things by it at once. His Tama, fussing over him when they picked him for Ben-Hassrath— _Ashkaari, this will suit your cleverness well, but I worry about your good heart_ —

"The first clue was the trousers," The Iron Bull pointed out, and Krem shook his head, but he was laughing.

"Point taken. Come on, let's meet these homicidal elves of yours."

The Iron Bull had wondered how Skinner would deal with the introduction, but she only looked Krem over with a critical eye and nodded curtly at him. "Skinner, meet Krem; Krem, meet Skinner," The Iron Bull said. "And then there's, uh—"

It was Skinner who filled in the blank. "She wouldn't tell me," she said. Her tone was still clipped, but there was a hint of a smile around one corner of her mouth. "I call her Dalish."

The Iron Bull shot not-actually-called-Dalish a questioning look, and got an apologetic smile and a shrug in response. "Dalish, right."

"Neither of you are from Tevinter," Krem said.

"Orlais, mostly," Skinner said.

"Free Marches," Dalish said. "I had to leave my clan. It's complicated."

"Too many mages," Skinner said, as though that was a perfectly coherent explanation.

"I'm not a mage," Dalish said, but she was smiling at Skinner, who laughed. The Iron Bull had the feeling he was watching an in-joke with a history playing out in front of him.

"What are you even doing here?" he asked. "Bad place for elves."

Skinner's expression became shuttered, back to that unnerving sharpness from the market. Her hand went to one of her knives, though she made no move to draw it. "They take children from the alienages. From the Dalish, too. I'll make them pay."

"Oh, for—" Dalish said, and threw up her hands at the look Skinner shot her way. "Yes, you're going to make them pay, I know, only you don't really have a _plan_ , and I keep saying—"

"Killing shem slavers is a plan," Skinner said.

The Iron Bull thought about this. "No," he said finally. "It's no good. Place this big and this fucked up? Slavers probably kill each other all the time. No-one's going to notice this difference. You want to disrupt supply lines. Hit them before the border, you've got a better chance to get the people they take home in one piece as well. Work with someone on the inside to get runaways out. You can't break Tevinter. But you can help some people."

"Look," Skinner said, "I know what I am. I'm only good at making people hurt."

For years, ever since he'd walked out on the Qun, this was what The Iron Bull had tried to avoid. You talked to people and then it turned out they were lost and messed up and then you were stuck with this damn urge to help. People started counting on you if you did it well, or they hated you if you failed. 

Too late now.

"You find someone who can make plans, then," The Iron Bull said, and saw that she'd understood. This time, it was Dalish who lagged behind, frowning at the two of them.

"Yes," Skinner said, and, after a considering pause, "I don't suppose you really have a job for us now?"

"No," The Iron Bull said. "I'm on my own fool's errand here. But when I'm done—look, if I make it out, I'm starting a mercenary outfit. How's that sound? We pick our jobs carefully, we can get you paid for killing slavers."

Krem snorted, but had the kindness to not bring up The Iron Bull's sudden enthusiasm for an idea he'd brushed off before.

"In that case," Skinner said, "I'd better follow you and see to it that you _do_ make it out."

 

 

They found a caravan in the end, Vashoth merchants with expensive wares and too few weapons. "You let us follow along," The Iron Bull said, "no-one's going to rob you. My Chargers are great at what they do. Everyone wins."

"You're a company?" the leader of the group asked, eyeing them suspiciously. "A small one."

"I only brought the best along for this," The Iron Bull said. "We've got a job up Vol Dorma way."

The man shook his head, but considered the size of the maul that Krem had balanced across his shoulders and nodded his agreement.

"We're already a company now?" Krem asked in a low voice. "Chargers? Seriously?"

"You got a better reason for a Tal-Vashoth to be travelling with a 'vint and two southern elves?"

"I guess I don't," Krem said. "Works for me. I was just wondering whether it works for you."

"Why wouldn't it," The Iron Bull said, slightly defensive.

"I don't know, _chief_ ," Krem said. "Maybe because you're twitchy as shit about letting people get close to you? Maybe because you don't really care if you live or die?"

The Iron Bull grunted. The problem with drinking with Krem was that he actually listened to what The Iron Bull said. He'd mentioned, one night, that he'd always prefered to work alone, and now he got this for his troubles. "I'm fine," he said. "Leave it, Krem."

Krem did.

 

 

They made good time on the highway. The four of them held themselves apart from the Vashoth as much as they could, took turns to keep watch at night, slept in bundles of blankets around their own fire just outside the main camp, Bull and Krem by themselves and Dalish and Skinner curled close around each other. 

He wondered how they'd met, what their deal was. He didn't pry, any more than he pried into the story behind Krem joining the army, or why he always avoided talking about his family. But he didn't ignore it when he heard Dalish get up in the middle of the night and make her way away from the camp, either.

He found her standing under the first of the broad arches of the highway where it was raised up on pillars to cross the valley ahead.

"Need to talk?" he asked. He had to stoop to avoid catching his horns, and Dalish managed a smile at the sight of him, though she looked unhappy. Her pale skin became almost white in the moonlight, washed out.

"She's going to get herself killed," she said. "I knew it before we—well—got involved. But it didn't seem as important then. I thought, you know, we can look out for each other for a while, have a little fun. But it's not—I don't—"

"It's not just fun," The Iron Bull filled in.

"No," Dalish said softly. "Right now it's not very much fun at all."

"This was all her idea, I guess?"

"Yes," Dalish said. "I mean, I'm angry too. They don't think we're worth anything. Shems don't care about us in the south even, and up here it's worse. But she isn't Shartan."

Even Shartan couldn't deal with all of Tevinter, The Iron Bull thought. He didn't know the story well, half-remembered fragments told to him once in a tavern.

"Lucky I picked you up," he said, and Dalish smiled weakly.

"It is," she said. He hoped it would prove true in the long run.

 

 

Two thirds of the way to Vol Dorma, and The Iron Bull was finally getting the hang of hitting things with an axe again. The hole where his eye had been was starting to heal properly, itching like fuck but showing no sign of going bad. It helped him feel more settled in himself. As scars went, it was going to be amazing. Get a fancy patch on it or something, take it out for special occasions.

They were getting closer, he thought, and wondered as he had many times before what Dorian was doing, if he was safe. Probably not, all things considered. But there were degrees of danger. 

In fact they never made it as far as Vol Dorma, much less Minrathous. They made it only as far as the crossroads, a worn inscription on a stone pillar pointing north-east to Marnus Pell, the south-western road unmarked.

Beyond the crossroads, a woman stood, her hair shining golden in the sun. Just as golden was her dress, wrapped elegantly around her body, clasped in tight at the waist.

She held up a hand as the caravan approached.

Magister, The Iron Bull thought. This must be a Magister. Power rolled off her, palpable even from this distance.

The caravan slowed, the Vashoth exchanging worried looks, whispering amongst themselves, but the woman only smiled at them, looked around, her gaze finally coming to rest on The Iron Bull.

"My, I see why he was so interested in you," she said, and smiled again, flirtatious. "We have some things to discuss, Iron Bull."

"Shit," Krem said, behind him. "What's Magister Tilani doing here? What did you _do_?"

"He seduced my dear friend," the woman said. "A very good thing too. And do call me Maevaris."

She gestured for The Iron Bull to follow her, and stepped down from the road, into the trees, away from the curious eyes of the Vashoth. He did, and heard Krem, Dalish and Skinner trailing after him, uninvited. 

"So," The Iron Bull said, "you're telling me you're Dorian's friend, and I'm meant to believe you?"

"Of course you aren't meant to believe me," Maevaris said. "I don't take you for a complete fool, although you haven't gone about the thing very well, I must say. I'll prove myself to you before the end of the day, if you do as I say for now."

"Another exchange?" The Iron Bull said.

She laughed. "It wouldn't be a bad one. I don't mean to bind you to anything, though. I only ask that you come with me and see the situation. Dorian would never admit it, but he does need your help. I think he even wants it."

"I'm already going to him," The Iron Bull said. But it worried him that he didn't feel like she was lying. Fucking Tevinter, nothing you could trust, one big mess of magic and blood and demons.

"I know, my dear," Maevaris said. "Only I have to tell you—Dorian isn't in Minrathous. He's at his family's estate in Qarinus. I can take you to Qarinus, and I can give you my oath not to harm you, and I can, perhaps, bring Dorian to you."

"You claim a lot," The Iron Bull said. He felt unbalanced again, sick with it, with the fear that everything was going to go wrong and that he wouldn't be able to do a single thing after all. 

"You're worried I'm a demon, of course," Maevaris said. Smart woman. "I do understand. But my magic is untouched by blood. I'm not one of those twisted old creatures who's lost sight of the state of our land. Your handsome friend here knows, I think." She turned to Krem, who flushed slightly.

"Magister Tilani is—" Krem shrugged awkwardly. "She's a dissenting voice, she's against all the games the Courts play. Even people like me get to hear about that. And I know she and Altus Pavus are meant to run in the same circles. If you're her, then I'd trust you, I guess, more than any other Magister I've ever heard of. But I don't know as I could say whether you _are_ her or not."

Skinner was staring angrily at her, and The Iron Bull couldn't blame her. The best of Magisters wasn't much of a recommendation.

But Maevaris didn't seem put out by any of it. She shrugged elegantly. "Is that all? Here."

She unhooked a pendant from around her neck and tossed it precisely to Krem, who caught it, wide-eyed. 

"A birthright?" He stared at it as though it was going to bite him. "Shit, I've never even seen anything as valuable as this. Wouldn't know how to tell if it was real, though. I'm no altus."

Maevaris smiled. "You can feel it anyway. You know the magic of this land, and it knows you. Try, darling."

Krem frowned, and stared at the pendant, his fingers curled tight around it. "It feels right," he said at last, uncertain.

"Of course it does," Maevaris said, and stepped forward to take back the pendant. As gold as the rest of her, ornately twisted metal.

The Iron Bull sighed. "I'm not going to get any answer that isn't more Tevinter bullshit, am I?"

"No, I'm afraid not," Maevaris said. "That's what comes of spending time in strange lands, you see. You're going to find them strange."

"No shit," The Iron Bull said. He thought about it. Sooner or later, to find Dorian, he was going to have to trust someone with power. Maevaris could want anything from him, that was true. It was also going to be true of anyone else. Krem seemed to think she was alright, in relative terms. 

He felt balanced, again, on the edge of some precipice. He'd leapt once at least for Dorian already. What was one time more?

"Well?" Maevaris said. "Will you accept my help, freely given?"

The Iron Bull growled under his breath. Breathed. "Yeah," he said, finally. "Yeah, I will."

"Take my hand, then," she said. "I suppose your friends will be coming with us?"

"Damn right they will be," The Iron Bull said. "They're my people." It surprised him how much he meant it.

"Very well," Maevaris said.

Her skin was very smooth, and quite cool despite the heat of the day.

Although there was no physical movement, The Iron Bull felt that the world lurched around them. They turned, and the Imperial Highway was no longer anywhere in sight; instead, a path stretched away through apparently unbroken woodland. The Iron Bull, feeling that he was falling after all, still found it in him to hope the Vashoth wouldn't do too badly without them. Funny. Until recently he'd never thought of Vashoth or Tal-Vashoth as anything but targets.

Maevaris led them, and the world shifted step by step, magic tugging uncomfortably at The Iron Bull the entire time. This must be how Dorian had travelled. He didn't quite like the thought.

"I'm going to be sick," Dalish said. "This isn't right."

And then, with a final yank, the magic faded away.

 

 

The Iron Bull had closed his eyes against that final nauseating twist of magic, and opened them again to a beautiful tree-lined path through a garden. His head was spinning. The afternoon was growing golden with the approaching sunset, and the air was full of the smell of jasmine. No drought here—despite the heat, no flower was wilting.

"Walk up to the house," Maevaris said. "Take all the time you like. You have the freedom of my estate. My man will see to it that you have a place to sleep. I imagine your handsome friend who knows about Magisters will want to buy you all food from the market himself, and I don't blame him for a moment. My man will take care of directions, too. I, meanwhile, have urgent business elsewhere. We will talk once you have eaten and rested a time. I may speak more freely here."

"Your man is your slave?" Skinner said, and The Iron Bull held himself in readiness to intercept a knife.

"Servant, rather," Maevaris said. "My beloved late husband—but that story will keep."

Skinner didn't precisely deflate, but she didn't go for a knife either, and right at that moment The Iron Bull was too tired to even care if it was the truth or not, only grateful to have been spared any attempted murder, however justified.

Maevaris left them in a more ordinary way than she had found them, brisk steps away along another path through the garden. 

"Anything you want to share, Krem?" The Iron Bull said, when she was gone.

Krem snorted. "Hardly. Knowing a few things about politics isn't much of a secret. But hey, haven't _you_ got something to share? Seduced her dear friend, was it?"

"Sleep with a guy one time," The Iron Bull said. "Yeah, fine. It's like that. Whatever that means. I'm fucking Tal-Vashoth, remember? What do you think I know about that shit?"

"Enough to run all over Tevinter, apparently," Krem said. "No, look, let's just go up to the house. She's right, I'll need to go and buy food."

"What's the thing about food?" Dalish asked, which was good of her; it saved The Iron Bull the trouble. He’d heard that rumour about Minrathous, but it’d never been explained.

Krem sighed. "Superstition, mostly, I guess. There's a lot of stories, though. Accepting food from Magisters is like—I don't know. I wouldn't. I guess if I trusted one completely, but that's not likely to happen, is it?"

"No," Skinner said.

Aw, look at my little gang, The Iron Bull thought. Getting along together. United in suspicion.

"Her magic was strange," Dalish said. "All the magic here is. Nothing outside mages do takes right. What _is_ this place?"

"The estate?" The Iron Bull asked, though he doubted it.

She shook her head. "Tevinter. It's worse here though, there was only a little hint of it near the border."

"Not that you'd know about that," Skinner added helpfully, "as you aren't a mage."

It startled a laugh out of her, and Skinner smiled at that. Maybe, The Iron Bull thought, they'd actually be alright.

The estate was large. They walked the path towards the distant cluster of buildings, under wide arches dripping flowers, the paving stones under their feet smooth with age. They had settled into silence by the time they reached the first building. There seemed to be nothing to say.

Stables, some sort of smaller house, maybe for keeping servants or elderly relatives. Wide stone steps led up to the back of the grander mansion behind it, high windows with coloured glass, metal-inlaid doors thrown open to the garden. The air was cooling now with the onset of evening, and here they stood in shadow, sheltered at last.

By the open doors there stood a dwarf. He bore no collar or mark of slavery, for all that meant—they didn't always, The Iron Bull knew. He'd seen enough of it on Seheron, Magisters who pretended their slaves loved them. Who had perhaps broken them so thoroughly that the slaves believed it themselves. But all the same, he rather thought this was Maevaris' man, and that he was no slave after all.

"I welcome you," the dwarf said. "Please, this way. I have been given instructions to see you settled."

 

 

It was some time before the bells at the front gates of the estate rang to announce the return of Maevaris Tilani. The Iron Bull, who had napped and eaten the savoury pastries that Krem had thrust at him and was feeling slightly more goodwill towards the world as a result, watched the household spring into action with some interest.

"I infiltrated a Magister's household once, you know," he said to the dwarf, who had declined to introduce himself. "Shit, that was a good time. I mean, I got stabbed, but it was a great change of pace from other people trying to get the drop on _me._ Bastard had been making poison by the barrell. Saved a lot of lives with that one." He considered. "This place is prettier."

"Fascinating," the dwarf said, with perfect politeness, and The Iron Bull was tempted to congratulate him on his patience. 

"Yeah, sorry, I know, you've got better stuff to do," The Iron Bull said. "Where d'you want us?"

"Magister Tilani instructs that tea will be taken in the blue room," the dwarf said. "The second door to the right."

The Iron Bull nodded, but before he'd taken a step in that direction, the front doors had been flung open. Maevaris Tilani swept in, handing off a cloak she hadn't been wearing in the garden to a waiting maid, straightening her hair with quick precise movements. She talked over her shoulder to someone who walked several steps behind her, features half-hidden in the glare of the evening sun. The man stepped into the shade of the porch, and The Iron Bull's breath caught. It couldn't be, it wasn't possible—it was—

He had tried to imagine how he would meet Dorian again, what it would take to convince him to accept protection. Practicalities. He had not thought about how it would feel. How _much_ it would feel.

"Dorian," The Iron Bull said. He could hear the hoarseness which had suddenly taken over his voice. In his chest, his heart beat frantically.

Dorian froze in the doorway, mouth open but whatever words he had been speaking to Maevaris forgotten. "Iron Bull," he said, swallowed hard, wide-eyed, all his humour momentarily lost to him. "You—that is—I don't believe—what in all of Thedas happened to your eye?"

It was here that The Iron Bull experienced a moment of excruciating clarity, a piece of knowledge that sat heavy at the base of his skull. No one thing did it. It was the sight of Dorian's face, so long imagined. The worry clear in his expression for The Iron Bull's fucking eye of all things. That he hardly seemed to know what to say, stumbled and faltered and settled finally, incredibly, not on sarcasm but on care.

This, too: the buzzing through his body that felt like magic but was only Dorian, the physical presence of him, calling forth response.

The Iron Bull, who was a fast thinker, came to these two realisations more or less simultaneously: first, that this was indeed the madness he should have been fearing the entire time he had been busy fearing rage, however he had rationalised the actions that had brought him here; and second, that he didn't really care any more. He imagined love would destroy him just as well as hate could have, but he would accept it now.

"Come," Maevaris said, not unkindly, when The Iron Bull found no response. "We have things to discuss."

 

 

Dorian closed the door behind him, maybe harder than he'd meant to; Maevaris frowned at the noise, although she hid it fast, and with luck Dorian might not have had time to notice. Probably more worry to it than anything if The Iron Bull had her pinned right, but Dorian, disconcerted and afraid, might not take it that way. 

He'd been paying more attention to The Iron Bull than to Maevaris, though, of course. He was standing stiffly by the door, his hand still on the panel, his face turned towards Bull. He looked to be trying to turn his shock into haughtiness. It didn't work. 

"I freed you from obligation," he said. There was uncertainty there, plenty of it.

"It's not about obligation," The Iron Bull said, and saw how Dorian breathed in sharply, not quite a gasp. Maevaris turned from them, stepped over to a table by the window. Stroked non-existent creases from the cloth that lay upon it with an absent hand. What did she think of in that moment? But The Iron Bull's energy was all for Dorian. He let her think what she would.

"Everything," Dorian said finally, "is about obligation. As my beloved father has so kindly reminded me these weeks past."

It might only have been another way of phrasing what The Iron Bull had known to be true under the Qun: to accept one's place, to choose to be. No saying, then, why it should have filled him with anger now. He couldn't think clearly, and that in itself was really the worst of it. He couldn't read below the surface of the situation.

"What the fuck does that even mean?" he said. 

"It means," Dorian said, "that my obligation to my family and my land will be fulfilled by other means, as I find myself unable to fulfill it by procreating."

"It means," Maevaris said, turning finally back to them, "that they will kill him."

Dorian sighed. "Well, yes, if you must be blunt about it."

"Darling," Maevaris said, "dancing around the truth is one thing at a party, but I'm afraid we really don't have unlimited time. Your Iron Bull wants very badly to help you, and I have exerted no inconsiderable effort to make sure he's able to do so. Please, sit."

"He's hardly _my_ —" Dorian broke off, with a curious look in The Iron Bull's direction, and shook his head a little, took a seat in the chair Maevaris had gestured to. 

"I think you might be surprised," Maevaris said. "Iron Bull, please."

"I'll stand, if it's all the same to you," The Iron Bull said. "Don't want to mess your chairs up." They were spindly-looking things. Dorian and Maevaris looked large enough in relation to them. And if he stood, he could move, work some of the tension out of his body.

"That's quite alright," Maevaris said, and the smile she treated him to was on the fond side. "I will leave you shortly; I imagine you'll want to discuss all of this alone. But we must have the facts first. Dorian has many fine qualities, but he does get distracted."

"Yes, thank you, I'm sitting right here," Dorian said.

Maevaris laughed. "And it _is_ good to see you out of that wretched house you're kept to. But come. The facts."

"The facts," Dorian said, acerbic, "are that I have broken a magical contract, and disgraced my family, and it is therefore fair to make a fucking sacrifice of me for the good of House Pavus and Tevinter. It is an _honour_ , and one I'm sure Halward Pavus will enjoy despite his mourning and despite the supposed opposition of House Pavus to the whole concept of blood rites. I'm unclear as to what else could possibly be considered relevant, given that nothing can reasonably be done about it." His hands were restless as he spoke, their movements sharp and agitated.

"Wait, you're telling me the Magisters sacrifice people?" The Iron Bull said. "Wouldn't people know about that? Everyone talks about blood, but—shit, if Krem knew about something like _this_ you'd never get him to shut up about it."

"Cremisius Aclassi is a fine boy, and I admit I feel rather protective of him," Maevaris said, "but all his knowledge of our business is rumour. He does not know that people are sacrificed because precious few who are outside of the Magisterium know it, and practically none at all outside the Courts."

"They don't notice people vanishing?" The Iron Bull asked.

"My dear," Maevaris said, too kindly, "people don't vanish. Have you heard no stories from your friend about people who seemed to change overnight? I imagine he has a number." She stood abruptly, back to them again as she went to pour tea, two cups, a curious look over her shoulder at The Iron Bull with her hand above a third forming a silent question.

"You can accept," Dorian said quietly. "It's not dangerous. I promise."

The Iron Bull nodded, and Dorian's mouth quirked. Surprise? Amusement?

"Cremisius has his superstitions," Maevaris said, handing him the tea. The scent of orange blossom, like Dorian in the clearing. He didn't carry that scent with him any more. "I don't begrudge him them. We give the Soporati precious little reason to trust us."

"For example, you sacrifice people," The Iron Bull said. "And, what, let a demon take their place? Run around pretending to be human?"

There was a terrible silence. The teacup in Dorian's hands tilted dangerously.

"Yes," Dorian said finally, with brittle lightness. "Yes, that's exactly it, as it happens."

The Iron Bull imagined it. Dorian's face but not Dorian's thoughts. Calculating eyes, a coldness alien to Dorian's person. A demon would marry, and play the power game, and House Pavus would seem respectable. 

He wanted to throw up.

Maevaris moved forward with surprising speed, coming to her feet in front of The Iron Bull to take the cup gently from his hands before it could fall. "There—be calm—steady yourself. It need not happen to Dorian. Frankly, I hope to bring about a state of affairs where it need never happen to anyone again." She watched him closely, eyes on his face. The Iron Bull shuddered, and, after a couple of false starts, drew a deep breath. She smiled, and patted his hand. "Yes, there you go."

I'm better trained than this, The Iron Bull thought, frustrated. But clearly he wasn't. Maybe if he'd actually been that damn well trained he'd never have left the Qun. If he'd been able to control his emotions, shut them off and get the job done—

He pulled himself back from the edge. 

"You can save him," Maevaris said. "I hoped—and seeing you, I do believe it."

"It isn't that simple," Dorian said. "It would require—it cannot be done. And if it could, the consequences—"

"—are grossly overstated," Maevaris said. "Dorian, I am not a fool, I have done the work. I do not for one moment believe that these horrible sacrifices are necessary to keep the land intact. They preserve only the power of the Magisters, you must see that."

"I must see no such thing," Dorian said, "although I grant that the circumstances are unclear. But even if you're right, the point remains that it has never been done, Mae. Not once. I have no interest in taking part in some elaborate tragedy, I must say."

"You seem quite determined to prevent it from being anything _but_ a tragedy," Maevaris said. She touched The Iron Bull's hand once more, and turned to Dorian, brushing some minute fleck from her skirts. "Perhaps it's time for you to trust someone enough to let them help you."

Dorian looked up at her, and there was something awful in his expression, lost and desolate. "Lack of trust has very rarely been my problem, as you well know."

Maevaris sighed. "I know no such thing, darling. But I do know that you're terribly lonely right now. Is it so wrong to need a little love?"

" _Yes_ ," Dorian said, but he turned his face away, and the unsteadiness in his voice made The Iron Bull ache to go to him. "I refuse to be ashamed of what I am, but that doesn't mean I can afford to—to hope for something impossible."

"Does anyone want to fill me in?" The Iron Bull said. "What exactly are we talking about here?"

"If you want to save Dorian," Maevaris said, "you must trust him entirely. You must hold onto him, and not let him go, and believe absolutely that he will not harm you. Traditionally, the stories indicate that true love is a necessary component, and also, naturally, an impossible one. I tell you that it can be done. I have found that paying too much attention to what stories say is possible or impossible is a waste of time."

The Iron Bull snorted. "Pretty vague for an instruction."

"Yes," Maevaris said. "It is rather, isn't it."

"Mae," Dorian said, "I don't know what on earth you're thinking. This is going to be a terrible mess."

"It already is," Maevaris said, the first really angry sharpness The Iron Bull had heard from her. "I am thinking that I'm very tired of seeing good people lost to this wretched land, and very tired of seeing abuse justified as necessary, and I haven't the stomach to lose a dear friend on top of it all when he could very well be saved. I have already lost a husband." 

There was silence. She stared down at Dorian, who looked back at her, stricken. Her face was flushed, and her eyes bright. But she held herself from tears. She had some willpower, this one. The Iron Bull found he admired her, in that moment, despite all the magisterial shit.

"Oh," Dorian said.

If he could just speak to Dorian alone this very moment, if he could just say—but of course, he could.

"Dorian," he said, and both Dorian and Maevaris, turning to him, seemed in that moment to understand.

"Yes," Dorian said, and got to his feet heavily. "Mae, if you'll excuse us—"

"Naturally," she said. "You know the house, my dear. Make use of it as you will. Or you can remain here."

"No," Dorian said. "No, I rather think that if I look at those wretched drapes of yours for a moment longer I may lose what little of my mind remains to me."

"And we could not have that," she said, with a good impression of solemnity.

Dorian's hand closed around The Iron Bull's wrist, the firmness of his grip disguising the tremor The Iron Bull had seen in his fingers as Dorian reached for him. 

"Come," Dorian said. 

 

 

 

Dorian led him out into the hall, up the main stairs. At the end of a corridor an alcove housed a broad window, the little area screened from view by long trailing vines which grew from hanging baskets near the ceiling. Plants grew against the window too, reaching upward, small golden and purple flowers turning to the sun.

The Iron Bull had to stoop to keep his horns from sending the baskets swaying as Dorian drew him into the corner, and Dorian smiled at that, but the tension didn't leave him.

"Go home," he said urgently, pressing The Iron Bull back against the wall. The last of the evening sun flooded his face with warm yellow light, made it incandescent. "For goodness' sake, Bull, don't tangle yourself up in this land. It will tear you apart."

"Just _Bull_ now, is it?" The Iron Bull said, raised his hand to touch it to Dorian's cheek. "I guess you've earnt it." 

"I'm quite certain I've done nothing of the sort," Dorian said, but he didn't pull away. He seemed mesmerized by The Iron Bull, unable to look at anything else. Flattering, really. "I am no manner of damsel to be rescued, and I'll have you know I can take care of my own problems. I did this to myself, and I don't care to ask you to fix it."

"That's not what it sounded like downstairs," The Iron Bull said. "Sounded a lot more like you planned to go along with all this shit."

This close, The Iron Bull could feel how Dorian shuddered, whole-body. "I—don't know," Dorian said, bowed his head, forehead pressed to The Iron Bull's sternum. The Iron Bull cupped his head carefully, stroked his hair. "I was taught to despise these rites of sacrifice. I believed my father was sincere in his rejection of them. I would escape in a moment if I could, if I believed that it were possible."

"Tell me the story, the one Maevaris talked about," The Iron Bull said, and Dorian looked sharply up at him. "What?"

"You're going to try to save me regardless, aren't you? You simply cannot help yourself."

The Iron Bull grimaced. "You have no idea."

Dorian's look of startlement only grew. "That's why you're Tal-Vashoth. You saved someone's life. Is that how you managed to lose your eye, too? I tell you, of all the stupid, ridiculous—"

What else he would have called The Iron Bull remained unknown, because this was the moment when The Iron Bull, inexplicably overcome with emotion, kissed him: deep and desperate, and Dorian moaned in surprise against his mouth. But then there was the hot slide of their tongues against each other as Dorian relaxed into it and let The Iron Bull sweep him along, a wave of pleasure sharpened by fear. Which would be worse, to lose hope entirely or to cling to it and have it proven false?

"Bull," Dorian gasped, when they broke apart, something like a cry of loss, "Bull—" It was Dorian's turn to reach for The Iron Bull's face this time, his fingers very gentle at the edges of the bandage over his lost eye, stroking along the skin of his cheek, over his brow.

"Tell me the story," The Iron Bull said again, more gently.

"Would you kiss me again, first?" Dorian said, very quiet, as though he'd asked for something forbidden. Perhaps he had. "I've thought of your hands on me every night since—I touched your marks until they faded and pretended it was you—"

"Oh, shit yeah," The Iron Bull said, and bent hastily to give Dorian what he needed. Coincidentally, it was very much what The Iron Bull needed himself. Contact. A sort of affirmation. 

Dorian melted against him, letting The Iron Bull support his weight entirely; kissed as though he never wanted to stop, was trying to forget that stopping was an option. This time, The Iron Bull didn't feel like trying to gentle him. He had wanted for too long, and they had too little time—always, it seemed, too little time, a series of moments with definite limits, carefully measured.

At last Dorian was panting against The Iron Bull's neck, fingers flexing weakly against his shoulders, as though kissing alone had exhausted him utterly.

"The story," he murmured. "A depressing morality tale for the youth of Tevinter. Don't question your elders in their wisdom and all that rubbish. They have a forbidden love, these two people. He is condemned to be sacrificed, she determined to save him; but he is magically bound to allow himself to be taken to the place of sacrifice, so they can't simply run away. He says that if she can follow in secret and hold him as magic pulls at him and changes him into whichever dangerous thing your nanny thinks will scare you most then he'll be saved, and the fade won't be able to take him. Naturally she promises she will, and naturally she cannot, both their houses are disgraced, and the moral of the tale is that they ought never to have tried in the first place. A terribly dull, sordid thing. Not a very widely told tale, of course, but the children of Magisters tend to have heard it more times than they can stand."

The Iron Bull held him close. "You buy into all that?"

"I suppose I don't know what I think any longer," Dorian said, voice muffled as he turned his face against The Iron Bull's neck, inhaled deeply.

"You were right," The Iron Bull said after a moment. "I'm going to try and save you, and I did lose my eye saving someone—Krem, actually, maybe Maevaris told you. He's a good guy, you'd like him."

"As if you have any idea what I'd like," Dorian said. "We hardly know each other." But his voice sounded less desolate than it had at any time since he'd arrived. 

"Might be you'll get to find out," The Iron Bull said. "I'm not going to swear it. That alright?"

"I—suppose I can't stop you trying," Dorian said.

"Order me not to, and I'll go. You think it's too dangerous for the land, for the regular people, or you're just ready to accept it, I'll go."

"Just like that?"

It would quite likely be the end of him, The Iron Bull thought. But he'd do it, if Dorian wanted it. "Yeah," he said. "Just like that."

"You wouldn't want to," Dorian said, cautious, presenting an idea he didn't really believe in. For the sake of argument, say—

"Doesn't matter," The Iron Bull said, and felt Dorian stiffen in his arms.

"I see," Dorian said.

A misstep, then, The Iron Bull thought. But he'd only spoken the truth. Whatever he wanted, it had to be secondary to his role. If he was giving himself over to Dorian as a weapon, it was Dorian's choice to take him up or put him aside.

"You never asked why I called myself The Iron Bull," he said. It was hard to do. A surprising internal resistance.

"No," Dorian said.

"It's like—uh—like a reminder, I guess," he said. "It's not like the name of a person, right? More like a name for a maul or something. Mindless."

"Why are you telling me this," Dorian said, pulled back enough to look up at The Iron Bull. "There's nothing mindless about you."

"I left the Qun," The Iron Bull said. "It's—I don't know, outsiders can't really get it. We lose the rules of the Qun, we go savage. I've seen it happen a hundred times."

Dorian held his gaze, unflinching. "I don't fear you," he said.

"Not the point. It's going to happen either way. I made my choice. The Qun didn't fail me, but I damn well failed it, so whatever happens—"

"Oh, Bull," Dorian said, reached up to touch his face again, trembling fingers against his scarred cheek, and oh, how significant it felt—but what it signified, he couldn't say. "You are absolutely the most ludicrous man I've ever slept with. Whatever am I to do with you?"

"Let me save you," The Iron Bull said, and Dorian's lips quirked into an unhappy little smile.

"Do you want to save me," he said, "or are you simply intent on saving _someone_?"

"What difference—" The Iron Bull began, and broke off with a curse, took a shuddering breath, felt Dorian's fingers tense against his cheek. "Fuck. I want," he hesitated again, fumbling after words. He felt unlike himself, unable to find any sort of stillness or steadiness to wrap himself in. "It's you. Don't know what to do with that. But it's you."

"Rather a poor joke," Dorian said. "I was simply asking. You needn't humour me."

"It's you," The Iron Bull said again, looked down at Dorian seriously. "I went looking for, I don't know—something. Someone to direct me. Someone I wouldn't mind dying in a fight against. You're not what I expected, but if I'm a weapon to be used, I want you to use me."

He didn't expect the anger that lit up Dorian's face, though he thrilled at it, at how alive Dorian looked all of a sudden. Vibrant with rage. "Venhedis! Do you actually believe any of these things you're saying? Do you have any idea how utterly ridiculous you sound right now? You want me to use you? You are not a—a _thing._ "

"You didn't seem to mind before," The Iron Bull snapped, and regretted it even as he did, even before Dorian jerked away from him as though he'd touched vitaar. 

"I am not proud of that," Dorian said. His face was turned to the window, his mouth tight and unhappy, his eyes closed. "I was not—I did not—I have no excuses to offer."

"That wasn't fair," The Iron Bull said. "Shit, this place is messing with me. You didn't use me, not more than I used you."

"Oh, well, in that case," Dorian said bitterly. "By all means. We wanted things from each other and didn't particularly care how we got them. What an excellent basis for a, a—" he gestured helplessly, fell silent.

It was not a silence The Iron Bull knew how to break.

Dorian found his tongue again first. "I hardly even remember why we're arguing any more," he said. "This is ridiculous. We have little enough time without wasting it on making one another feel miserable. I'm quite sure there'll be enough time for that later if we manage to survive the week."

"Hey, look at that optimism," The Iron Bull said. "That's the spirit."

Dorian laughed. "Oh, yes, that's me. My mother always said—well, never mind that, I suppose. Do you want to kiss me? Because I'd rather like it if you did."

"Oh," The Iron Bull said, "I want to. Back in the clearing, when you asked me to fuck you, I just wanted to kiss you for hours. Not that the fucking wasn't great, shit, but—"

"Is there a _reason_ you're still talking?" Dorian said. "I mean, not that this hasn't been a lovely chat, but if you wouldn't mind terribly."

The Iron Bull stroked a hand up Dorian's neck, dragged the pads of his fingers out along the underside of Dorian's jaw, enough pressure to make him tilt his head back. He could feel it when Dorian swallowed. Heat swelled in him.

"You going to let me try to save you?" he asked, and Dorian trembled, controlled himself.

"You know I am," he said, low and hoarse.

The Iron Bull took Dorian's face very carefully in both hands, fingers curled around the curve of his skull; felt the strength of him, muscle and bone, solid and real. The life of him, the flutter of his pulse.

"Dorian," The Iron Bull said, with reverence, and pressed their lips gently together, and thought: no demon can have this.

Against his mouth, Dorian made incoherent noises, gasped, maybe pleasure, maybe need. His hands clutched at The Iron Bull's waist, desperate, although it was only the simplest of kisses.

The gentleness of the kiss did not last. Dorian seemed incapable of maintaining it. Who could blame him? They were probably going to get themselves killed soon enough. Best to put on a show. Biting, possessive kisses, Dorian's mouth so hot and slick against his, but his teeth so sharp. The scrape of Dorian's nails across his skin.

"Come," Dorian said breathlessly, kissed The Iron Bull again even as he tugged him back out into the corridor, "come, I want you, oh, Bull—"

To stop touching seemed impossible. He had thought Dorian might shy away from it where others could see, but he seemed beyond that now—or it could be that Maevaris meant safety for him, a lowering of defences. Even though lust was trying to fog his mind, The Iron Bull found he hoped it was the latter.

They stumbled together, Dorian leading. The Iron Bull's shoulder knocked into a wall as they kissed again without pausing, his horns close to clipping some painting in an ornate gilded frame.

That Dorian found the right door to wrench open was impressive. Perhaps this was how he did things. Found a man at one of the parties Maevaris Tilani must hold, flirted with him until the pair of them were too wound up to wait, stumbled away together—

He hoped those men had taken care of Dorian. He hoped they'd appreciated what they had, looked at him with wonder, taken the time to hold him after.

The door closed, and he crowded Dorian up against it, lifted him easily with hands under his thighs, settling himself between Dorian's spread legs. Kissed Dorian's throat when his head fell back against the wooden panels, kissed the corner of his jaw. 

"Oh, oh," Dorian groaned, hands on The Iron Bull's shoulders. " _Oh,_ you just—I can't believe you—"

"Tell me what you need," The Iron Bull said, growled the words against Dorian's skin, inhaling at the base of his throat. He smelled of nothing but soap and sweat, of himself, but it tightened The Iron Bull's chest, hardened his cock. 

"I want," Dorian paused, gasped as The Iron Bull kissed his throat again. "I want to do something for you. I don't want it to be about me, although I, oh, I appreciate that I am—" he faltered as The Iron Bull bit carefully at his neck, not hard enough to bruise; let his head fall forward, breathing hot into the small space between them. "You brute, you're trying to distract me."

Well, yes. It was a hard thing that Dorian asked. The Iron Bull shuddered, fumbled after the words for it. He wanted Dorian to feel good, wanted to find all the ways to make him raise his voice, every sensitive place on his body. He wanted to bury his face in the coarse hair between Dorian's legs and breathe in the smell of his arousal, to taste it on his tongue, remember all these intensely physical, human things. He wanted to smell Dorian on his skin for hours.

If they had time, he'd have had Dorian fuck him. Slow grinding, the steady shift of Dorian's cock inside him driving both of them out of their minds. Would have fucked Dorian, after, held him in his lap and thrust up mercilessly into him, feeling Dorian's come leaking out of him the whole time, watching Dorian's face transformed with pleasure.

As it was, he doubted they were going to make it properly out of their clothes.

How had he come to want a single person in this way? Oh, he knew the answer, treasured it and feared it. Had already decided not to deny it.

"Let me suck you off," he said, and Dorian huffed helpless laughter, slumped forward against him.

"You seem to be rather missing the point," he said. "I'm not averse, but honestly, that's hardly—"

"I want it," The Iron Bull said. "I really fucking want it. Dorian—you smell so _good_. Want to know how you taste."

Dorian moaned against The Iron Bull’s shoulder, drew a shuddering breath. ”Well,” he said, attempted flippancy undermined by the unsteadiness of his voice, ”when you put it like that, I suppose—oh—yes—”

The Iron Bull let Dorian carefully down, holding him until he found his footing; kept him pinned against the door for a messy kiss that spread fresh heat through every part of his body. Sparked across his skin like Dorian’s magic.

By the time The Iron Bull sank to his knees, Dorian was already hard, the shape of his cock obvious through his clothing. The Iron Bull buried his face there, felt the outline with his mouth, breathed in deeply.

Dorian’s hands found his horns, thumbs teasing across the sensitive skin at their bases; but he also leant down on them a little too heavily, as though he couldn’t stay standing without help. Well, that was hot too.

His robes before had been elaborate things, and The Iron Bull had been glad to skip working out how to remove them. He was simply dressed now, summoned abruptly from confinement. A lace here, a single buckle there. 

Perhaps The Iron Bull did tease a bit, let his fingers linger against Dorian’s cock, a little pressure, enough to make Dorian gasp above him. But he hadn’t the patience for much. Nor was there the time.

Dorian’s cock, when he got to it, was already leaking. The Iron Bull rubbed his thumb across the head, smeared the liquid that was gathering there. Brought his thumb to his mouth. A first taste, long-desired.

The noise Dorian made was strangled.

The Iron Bull had said that he wouldn’t swear to Dorian that he could be saved, and that was all that kept him silent. All the words he could say, promises, one day I’ll do this to you for ages, suck you until my jaw aches, draw it out until you only remember how to beg—

No promises that couldn’t with certainty be kept.

”Do I have to tell you again to get _on_ with it?” Dorian said, and he made no attempt to hide his fondness this time, stroked a gentle hand over The Iron Bull’s head, nails scratching pleasantly at his scalp. To think they could have jokes between them, even like this.

The Iron Bull hummed in acknowledgement, in pleasure. Leant forward to lick deliberately up the underside of Dorian’s cock, to kiss the delicate skin there.

Dorian’s hand tightened against his horn, felt as tension, a slight tug forward. Intentional? Probably not. In the hand against his scalp, a slight shift, a little press of fingertips.

The Iron Bull growled under his breath. The feeling of being pulled in, pressed against Dorian’s cock, yeah, that was working for him. He turned his face, breathed in a few more times. Oh, the smell of him, of all his arousal. ”Mm, let me,” he murmured, and Dorian’s hands went slack, his breathing heavy, little shuddering groans on every inhale. Here they were, hardly even begun, and The Iron Bull felt about as much of a mess as Dorian sounded.

”Alright?” he asked, a soothing hand on Dorian’s hip, fingers dragging across the little strip of skin left bare there.

Dorian’s laughter was choked. ” _Please_ , Bull.”

”Hmm,” The Iron Bull said, and drew back to close his lips around the head of Dorian’s cock. Pressed up with his tongue and let his eye fall closed, the satisfaction of the thing bone-deep. He would taste Dorian on his lips for the rest of the evening, and remember this. 

It was only enough for a moment. Need shifted and grew. 

”Oh, give me more,” Dorian said, and The Iron Bull gave himself a moment, stretched his lips around Dorian’s cock in something like a smile—took Dorian finally deeper, swallowed around him, delighted to discover that he could press his nose into the coarse dark hair between Dorian’s legs, surround himself, smell and touch and taste.

Dorian cursed. ”As though it were nothing—you—oh—”

A rapid pulse, stuttering against The Iron Bull’s tongue. Only one of Dorian’s hands was on The Iron Bull’s head now. Where was the other? Did he fist it in his shirt, run it through his hair? He was struggling to keep his hips still, trying so hard; The Iron Bull felt curiously charmed. Encouraged Dorian with hands on hips, guiding them into rolling motion, thrust and thrust and thrust, the slide of Dorian’s cock delicious, the stretch of The Iron Bull’s jaw and throat balanced on that perfect hot edge of discomfort.

The Iron Bull breathed through his nose, shifted Dorian to thrust more shallowly, more deeply again, unsure which of them he was teasing. How had he felt when he’d gone to see a Tamassran for the first time? He couldn’t possibly have been as over-eager and unsteady as this. Too much time imagining. Too much fear. Longing.

He settled back on his heels for a moment of distance, searching for some sort of mental balance; kept a hand wrapped loosely around Dorian’s cock, stroking lazily. His lips parted against the head, something like a kiss.

It was then that he looked up at Dorian—Dorian, who seemed beyond speech, who held a hand to his own throat, the fingers flexing and tensing, head thrown back. So very much like that gesture from the day in the clearing, for all the world as though he was remembering how The Iron Bull had pinned him. And oh, fuck, the idea of it alone—

”Hey,” The Iron Bull managed, hoarse from the strain on his throat, from the tangle of feeling inside him. ”Hey, why don’t you come now. Mark me. I’ll carry the smell of you with me, and you can think about that when you go.”

He tightened his grip as he spoke. Dorian’s cock was slick with saliva, but The Iron Bull’s fingers still dragged and caught a little; Dorian’s curses were fragmented things, his attempts at self-control long forgotten.

”Yeah,” The Iron Bull said. ”Yeah, that’s it, there you are,” and there Dorian was, cock jerking hard in The Iron Bull’s hold, come striping warm across The Iron Bull’s face, cheek and lips and chin, wonderful and filthy.

Dorian stared down at him, chest heaving. Drew a fingertip down The Iron Bull’s cheek. His expression was one of dazed disbelief.

The Iron Bull smiled, tipped his head back to let Dorian see the full effect. 

”Oh, Bull,” Dorian said, and seemed to give up on the idea of standing, let his knees fold under him. He would have fallen, but The Iron Bull’s hands were there, firm on his hips, guiding him down. 

They knelt together: The Iron Bull's knees parted, Dorian between them.

"You're quite a mess," Dorian murmured. Fascination, maybe awe. "Let me—I want—"

He leant in, shuddering hot breath against The Iron Bull's cheek. Kissed delicately. Licked.

"Fuck," The Iron Bull said. "Fuck, Dorian—"

He had almost forgotten that he was hard, as caught up in Dorian's pleasure as he had been. He was aware now.

Dorian laughed, and The Iron Bull felt it vibrate across his skin, let his fingers curl where they remained on Dorian's hips. 

"Hm, tighter," Dorian murmured, encouraging; pulled back to smile up at The Iron Bull. His expression was an indecipherable tangle of emotions. "You shouldn't be the only one who gets a memento. I demand one."

This time when Dorian leant in, his lips found The Iron Bull's mouth. He tasted of his own come. The Iron Bull would hardly have needed Dorian's coaxing, he found; his fingers pressed down sharply of their own accord. 

Dorian's hips jerked weakly, and Dorian groaned into the kiss, lips parting, the slightest scrape of teeth. A new moment of satisfaction.

"Here," Dorian said, and pressed his hand up between The Iron Bull's legs, cupped his balls through his trousers, slid his knuckles along the length of The Iron Bull's cock. "Don't stop kissing me."

With this request it was entirely too easy to comply. 

Dorian's fingers were deft on his belt; he did not trouble with actually undressing The Iron Bull, just loosened everything up enough to make space for his hand, pressed up again with no fabric between them.

The Iron Bull kissed him, and kissed him and kissed him; let his hips thrust lazily against Dorian's hand, all those small touches, fingers teasing and stroking with no particular goal. The steady pressure of his palm. A kind of afterthought, this, but one he felt touched that Dorian wanted to offer.

"I would suck you off," Dorian said, words gasped breathlessly between kisses, "but I can't—bear—to give this up—oh," He pulled away, but only for long enough to smile up at The Iron Bull, eyes soft. "They always did say I was selfish, you know."

"Vashedan," The Iron Bull snarled, rougher than he'd meant to, and dragged Dorian back into an urgent kiss, and let himself come apart with Dorian all over him.

 

 

They settled finally, side by side against the wall, Dorian heavy and warm against The Iron Bull's ribs. His breathing was evening out at last; The Iron Bull let the rise and fall of Dorian's chest guide his own breathing, sank into it, groaned on an exhale.

Dorian was quiet.

"Is it selfishness?" The Iron Bull asked.

"I hardly know any more," Dorian said, sighed. "I have been told so very many things by so very many people. And here I am, acting out some ridiculous story which I have always hated, for no other reason than to try and save my own skin. Perhaps for—well—sentiment. And that, I have always been told, is a great weakness indeed. What else would you call it, if not selfishness?"

Sentiment, was it?

"I don't know," The Iron Bull said. "Not wanting to be replaced by a demon impostor who can fuck with all your friends and run around the country killing slaves doesn't sound _that_ selfish, I've got to say."

"Hm," Dorian said.

The Iron Bull rubbed absently at the back of Dorian's neck, scratched gently through the short hair at the base of his skull. "Fine. Look. Big picture. You think these rituals are really helping Tevinter? You think it's a good idea for a country to build its supposed stability on deals with demons?"

"None of that changes the fact that I would never have done anything about this were it not _my_ life on the line," Dorian said, rather tiredly.

"Yeah. Sure. I'm not saying you're perfect. But it's a pretty nice coincidence, right? What you want and what's right, all at once."

"I suppose," Dorian said, and leant his head back against The Iron Bull's hand. Closed his eyes, allowed himself to be touched.

"Mae married for love," Dorian said after a moment. "I hardly know anyone else who did. I was always told that love came from fulfilling duty. Marry the person you're told to, and let it follow. All that awful rot. My parents despise each other, of course. My beloved mother once claimed that if I were a more dutiful son then they wouldn't need to argue so much. She loves that ridiculous story, you know. The futility of defying one's proper place. But," he sighed again, and it was a terrible sound, "using me for the ritual wasn't her idea."

As if that meant much. Let just anyone raise children and you ended up with a fucking mess.

"I don't have parents," The Iron Bull said. "That's not how we do it. How Qunari do it, I guess. No marriage at all. Neater."

"Ah, yes," Dorian said, rubbed tiredly at his eyes. "No love, either."

"No," The Iron Bull said. "Not like you mean."

"No messy feelings to get in the way of one's duty," Dorian said. "Really, it's a wonder Tevinter and Par Vollen don't have a cultural exchange programme instead of an ongoing conflict."

"Oh, we have feelings," The Iron Bull said, instead of even starting on the idea of the Arishok exchanging bows with some Tevinter mage in an elaborate hood and too many buckles. "You're meant to master them, that's all."

"How _did_ that go for you?" Dorian asked.

The Iron Bull snorted. "Not great. Guess I'm not as strong as my Tama hoped." Always caring too much. Yes, Hissrad, what _do_ you do when the choice is between a small village's safety and your direct orders? Think outside of the rulebook. But only so far.

"What a pair we are," Dorian said, and turned his face up for a kiss. Slow and messy, The Iron Bull's horns in constant danger of scraping the wall.

"Hey," The Iron Bull said reluctantly when they parted, "hate to bring it up, but I still don't know what to expect from the damn ritual."

Dorian's eyes fell closed, a shuttered moment to fight down emotion; his mouth went tight and unhappy. "Ah. Yes. It will, I suspect, not be kind to either of us." He looked up at The Iron Bull then, all fear despite his best efforts. "It will be on All Souls, of course. Tomorrow. For the dead, and for silence. You will get little chance to sleep tonight, I'm afraid. Beyond that, all I have is stories and theories. It is—I cannot tell you what is and is not true."

"Yeah," The Iron Bull said. "I figured."

"The ritual tears the veil wide open, I think," Dorian said, and The Iron Bull couldn't help but growl disgust. Dorian touched his face, a little caress of fingers, an attempt at soothing. "Not here—not even we are quite that stupid yet. There is a place, a type of crossroads between different worlds. I've never seen it. Mae says it's indescribable, which is not, I will admit, _terribly_ useful. I don't know if it warps as easily as the fade, but if the veil tears then I suppose we will to all intents and purposes be in the fade itself anyway. You know the sort of thing."

The Iron Bull shifted uncomfortable. "Not really."

The look Dorian gave him was blank with incomprehension.

"Qunari don't dream," The Iron Bull said.

"But you have mages," Dorian said. "You must be connected to the fade."

"Yeah," The Iron Bull said. "I don't know. Saarebas mostly aren't that strong. Maybe it's something you can breed for. Maybe it's something we can be trained out of when we're small. I don't know shit about the fade, anyway."

"Ah," Dorian said, and there was a resignation to his expression now. "I thought you must not know what you were asking to do."

"Hey," The Iron Bull said, "that doesn't mean you get to brush me off. Keep going."

"The fade is—changeable," Dorian said, but it must be counted a win that he did keep going—did lean in against The Iron Bull, too, when coaxed. "You cannot trust anything there. It will twist around you, draw on your thoughts, reflect your fears. If you were to let go of me there, with a demon intent on taking me from you, I doubt you would ever find me again. It will, of course, try to make you let go of me."

"Of course," The Iron Bull muttered.

Dorian sighed, settled closer. The Iron Bull tightened his hold. 

"You must not release me," Dorian said softly, and seemed compelled to take a kiss. "No matter what I say, no matter what I do, however I beg. Do you understand the impossibility of it?"

"Of course I don't," The Iron Bull said. "I'm a mindless savage, remember?"

Dorian laughed, shook his head. "It may make you believe you're holding something dangerous, as the story would have it," he said. "It may have other means. But you must anchor me, whatever it makes you see, whatever I say or do once the ritual has started. I do think that this kind of, of physical connection is the key. It kills you slowly and takes power from your death, I think, and it draws out what it needs to become you as it does it. Unanchored, it must be impossible to stand against. But to not be alone in the unreality of the fade would be powerful in itself. For it to be you—" he sighed. "But perhaps all this is only a story too."

The story said love was key, The Iron Bull thought. He was, quite suddenly, desperate to know how Dorian would have ended that sentence. Dorian, who had at least heard stories of love that involved sex and desire, who had some sort of idea what it might mean—

"Perhaps it will give me the strength to create some opening," Dorian said softly. "A chance for escape. I—there will be some kind of exit, I think, and you must see to it that I pass through it. In the damnable story it is a well, and the man must be plunged into it alone, in his own true form. A wretched sort of double test of trust, I suppose. I have no idea if that's necessary." He sighed. "But it could be. This is all the worst sort of guess-work."

"And you're not going to be alone, I guess," The Iron Bull said, when he was done silently cursing magic. "I mean, someone's got to do this ritual, right? I figure they're not just going to sit by and let this happen either."

"Half the Magisterium," Dorian said, "a wonderful opportunity for the courts of Minrathous, Vyrantium and Qarinus to come together and bond over a spot of murder. But they may, if Mae has the right of it. Stay hidden until the moment the ritual begins and they may not think you're real. There is a certain inclination here to view Qunari as demons. I may have made some sort of unfair accusation to that effect when we met, if you recall. Or they may fear the consequences of interrupting the ritual. We don't understand these forces we play with, after all."

Alright. A lot of different ways for this to go wrong, then. But if he'd been looking for dangerous situations to put himself in, he could hardly have done better.

Strangely enough, he didn't really want this to be the end.

Better make it through. 

There was little enough time left to dwell upon the thought. Hurried kisses, ineffectual tugs at clothing, whispered words, fear and comfort and speculation, what if, couldn't we, I've heard—

In the doorway, a pause full of other words that couldn't be spoken. Too huge and heavy for the space between them.

 

 

 

In the entrance hall, Dorian smoothed down his clothes for the twentieth time, let The Iron Bull adjust his hair for him; closed his eyes at the touch of The Iron Bull's huge hands, sighed. 

"You will do very well like that, darling," Maevaris said. "You look to have been quite upset, but nothing more. And even Halward must allow that you are within your rights to feel upset."

"I very much doubt that my father _must_ allow anything," Dorian said with a grimace. "To be emotional is quite unbecoming, as I'm sure you know."

She tutted. "That man! Of course his support has been valuable to me at times, but this behaviour simply won't do. I have a mind to have some words with Aquinea."

"Pray don't," Dorian said, with a certain horror.

"You know I know better than that," she said, gentling. "Come, we have little time. Take your leave."

Dorian looked helplessly up at The Iron Bull. He had seemed to walk away so easily before. This time, he was allowing The Iron Bull to see that it was hard.

The Iron Bull reached for him, touched a hand to his chest, over the heart. "Hey," he said. "I'll be seeing you."

"Yes," Dorian said, with a wry curl of the lips. "I suppose you will be, won't you. I can only hope that I will also see you." He straightened his shoulders, took a deep breath. "Bull—"

"Yeah," The Iron Bull said. "I know. But you're tough. Stuck it out this long, didn't you?"

"Such faith," Dorian said. His voice caught on the words. "Well, I suppose it must be as it is."

He pressed his fingers to his lips as though remembering The Iron Bull's kisses, then stretched out the same hand to touch the fingers to The Iron Bull's own mouth. A solemn gesture with the weight of ritual, like someone saying farewell to the dead.

"I am ready," Dorian said, words for Maevaris but his gaze on The Iron Bull.

"Of course you aren't ready," she said. "But we'll make do."

"I suppose we will," Dorian said, and turned finally away from The Iron Bull, walking with slow, heavy steps out through the wide doors into the gathering dusk.

It was the second time The Iron Bull had been forced to watch him leave like this. He'd prefer it if there wasn't a third.


	3. The Crossroads

It wasn't difficult to find the others: from behind a closed door the sounds of an argument could be heard. The words were indistinct, but the voices unmistakable. Krem and Dalish, for the most part. A sharp remark from Skinner cutting across them both.

The Iron Bull knew he'd have to deal with them sooner or later, and he was pretty sure he wasn't going to find himself feeling less tired and heavy any time soon. Well, then: into the breach.

He threw the door open, and they fell silent, heads whipping around. On the table they sat around, cards and food lay forgotten. For a moment, Krem's expression was far too knowing, and The Iron Bull, already tense, braced to wade into the middle of a fight that was probably about him. He didn't have the energy for it, but that was beside the point.

But Krem just broke into a grin. "Hey, chief! I need to find a mage, you said. You didn't say you damn well fucked Dorian Pavus. No, wait, sorry, what was it? _Seduced_ him. What did you do, bring him wine and flowers? Recite sonnets under his window?"

For a blank moment, The Iron Bull could hardly draw meaning from Krem's words, so far were they from the script he'd had in his head for this meeting.

Humour, his mind supplied belatedly. Ha ha, let's take the piss out of the boss for his fucked up sex life.

Right. That was—that was fine, actually. He could, he found, live with that.

"Why?" he said. "You coming to me for relationship advice?"

"Maybe," Krem said. "You think I should go for Magister Tilani? Fine figure of a woman, that one."

"Knock it off," The Iron Bull said affectionately. "I fucked him. Do you need illustrations? Do I have to give you children the talk? I hear no-one tells you shit about sex down here."

Krem laughed. "Uh, nah, I'm good."

The Iron Bull grinned. "So was he," he said, and got a surprised bark of laughter from Skinner as his reward for a terrible joke badly executed.

They made space for him at the table, dealt him in. It felt—not normal, exactly. Life had never been like this. But secure, in the way only a person with a place to belong could feel.

He thought, again: these are my people.

He was going to have to send them away.

That was for later. He shook off the heaviness of the thought, put it aside along with the memory of Dorian's fingers against his lips, and looked at his cards.

"Do any of you sorry bastards even have money?" he asked.

"Would do if you paid us," Krem said. "Or are we not enough of a mercenary company for that?"

"You'll get paid when you do some work, Cremisius," The Iron Bull said. "Ah, whatever. Let's just play."

"Could play strip," Skinner said helpfully, and Dalish laughed, hand over mouth. Another untold story to be had there, probably. 

"Behave," Dalish managed, and, to the rest of them, "ignore her."

Skinner shrugged.

They played until true darkness had fallen, glittering lamps throwing new shadows across the room. Dalish and Krem squabbled over the rules, and Skinner played very much by her own, and the entire thing was unmanageably chaotic. The Iron Bull let it all flow around him, and felt peace. 

But of course, Maevaris Tilani returned. He heard her enter before he saw her, kept his eyes on the game, nodded at the story Krem was telling about stealing apricots; let her pick her moment.

Finally, she cleared her throat.

"I hate to take you from your friends, but I must speak with you once more, Iron Bull," she said. "If you would care to walk with me?"

"Sure," he said, tossed his cards on the table and hauled himself heavily to his feet. "Let's go."

 

 

The winding garden paths were strung with lights, tiny flames that danced between the trees. The Iron Bull followed Maevaris on a slow circuit away from the house. Both moons hung bright above them.

"I suspected it before," Maevaris said, "but now I'm quite certain that I chose well. If anyone can save him it will be you. The way you look at him—" she trailed off, turned her face away as though in contemplation of the view. The Iron Bull shifted his weight, uncomfortable.

"I have been looked at with that gaze before," she said finally. "I regret that I did not choose well, at that time. Not that I married the man, but that I believed I knew how to keep him safe. There is no safety in Tevinter. We are all too much bound by its laws and its games."

"There's no safety anywhere," The Iron Bull said.

"There are also different kinds of danger," Maevaris said. "You know it well."

He did. 

"I married a dwarf," Maevaris said. "It was quite a scandal, although none of my attempts at shocking the Courts have entirely matched my first. I loved him dearly, you see. We do not marry for love. We marry for power, for obligation. But I thought—well, I thought that I could not stand to have my life ruled by that particular type of convention. I believe it is one of the reasons Dorian likes me, in fact, the dear. He has his ideals, as I have mine. I hope he need not pay too high a price for them."

A significant pause. She considered him. But if she expected The Iron Bull to talk about his feelings, she would be waiting for a long damn time. 

"Yeah," he said. "How about you tell me how I get to this crossroads?"

"Yes, of course," she said. "The Crossroads is between worlds. The veil here is thin, but there it hardly exists. It takes only the slightest tug to unravel it, and that makes the place ideal for these rites of ours. You will need a window, and a key to open it. The windows exist here and there, but the keys are few, and jealously guarded. You are lucky in your friends, as it happens. I am, after all, a Magister. Even if I shun the rites, I have a degree of access."

From under her cloak she lifted a knife, small and silvered, an ornately inscribed thing. The power of it threatened to turn The Iron Bull's stomach. 

"I tell you now," Maevaris said as he took it gingerly. "You must pay for passage in blood. It is no pact, no demon is called upon. Not blood magic as is generally meant. But nonetheless."

The Iron Bull made a disgusted noise, and she smiled at it.

"And yet you will do it. Dorian has told you, I think, what you must do when you are there."

"Yeah."

"I have every faith," she said. "When you succeed, you must leave Tevinter. You must do it before sunrise, I think—this is not a magical demand, but a piece of advice, for your safety. You will be hunted, and Dorian will be hunted."

"And how exactly am I meant to do that?" The Iron Bull asked.

"A Magister may with a little planning twist the world around them, so that one step covers a hundred miles," she said. "You cannot. But a Magister's horse will carry you swifter than the wind all the same. It will be taken care of."

"Better be a sturdy horse," The Iron Bull said. At some point he had become entirely resigned to every frightening, theatrical, ridiculous part of the situation. It was probably around the time Dorian had kissed him in the alcove.

"Oh, my dear, of course my horses are sturdy," she said with a laugh. "You may ride as hard as you please."

He shook his head, stifling a smile.

Maevaris sobered. "I have one final present for you," she said. "It is a thing of great importance to me. Consider it—well—a betrothal gift, if you will. No, don't look like that, I don't expect you to stand in the Chantry and swear before the Maker. It was a figure of speech."

She held out her hand, something small lying on her palm, and The Iron Bull reached out reluctantly to accept it. A ring, broad and heavy, carved of some pale stone along geometric lines.

"It may not fit your finger, but I ask that you carry it," she said. "A Child of the Stone made it, and it is the antithesis of the fade. It may save you yet."

"You give a lot," The Iron Bull said.

"I care a for Dorian a great deal. And I care, too, for Tevinter as she might be." Maevaris shrugged. "I am very tired of seeing people suffer for love. Is that not enough?"

"I don't know," The Iron Bull said. "I don't know shit about love."

"You know more than you think," she said kindly. "Or more than you admit, perhaps."

"You go ahead and think that," The Iron Bull said, without conviction. 

"Be good to him," Maevaris said, and turned back towards the house, leaving The Iron Bull alone with his thoughts.

 

 

His little would-be company had given up the pretense of doing anything but waiting for him when he made it back. Krem slumped tiredly in a chair. Skinner paced under the watchful eye of Dalish, who stood leaning against the wall. All three looked up at the door opening.

"Are you going to tell us what's happening now?" Dalish asked.

"I'm going to tell you," The Iron Bull said, "to get the fuck out of Tevinter."

"Oh, for the love of—" Krem said. "Look, we've been over this."

"And I'm telling you now," The Iron Bull said, "situation's changed. You can't help me on this one. I'm getting Dorian out, and I may be good but I'm not so good I can keep an eye on all of you at the same time. You want to be my first, you learn to fucking follow orders."

Skinner stared at him with suspicion. "You're going to get yourself killed."

The Iron Bull shrugged. "What's your point?"

"My point is you promised me something," Skinner said, savage. "Dalish. Give me one of my knives back."

"Later, darling," Dalish said, exaggerated sweetness and fluttering eyelashes. Skinner growled.

"She's right," Krem said. "You don't promise people you'll be in their corner if you can't follow through, chief."

They did have the right of it, of course, and that was exactly why The Iron Bull had avoided building a group around him over the past few years. And here he was. Fuck, but it was hard.

"Yeah, well," he said heavily. "Don't fucking trust Tal-Vashoth, I guess. Bunch of savages. There's your lesson. Get out."

They didn't move.

"You think you're going to go savage," Krem said slowly. "You think you're losing it."

"Drop it," The Iron Bull said.

"Oh no, not this one," Krem told him. "No chance. You think you're turning into, what, some kind of murderous monster?"

"That's what Tal-Vashoth are," The Iron Bull said. "You grow up under the Qun, you live by rules. Take that away, you get—fuck, murdered children, I don't know."

"Yeah, I've really seen how hard it for you to resist murdering people," Krem said, exasperated. "You sure did slaughter all those soldiers who were going to kill me for deserting. Those people in the market, too, what a blood-bath. You telling us to get out now, that's not because you're worried we'll get hurt and it'll be your fault, you just want to, what, keep all the Tevinter head-bashing for yourself?"

"You don't know what you're talking about," The Iron Bull said.

Krem stared him down. "Oh, don't I?" he said. "Why'd you leave the Qun, chief?"

"Enough," The Iron Bull said. "That's _enough_ , Krem."

"You know what?" Krem said. "I really don't think it is. Come on. Let's hear about how dangerous you are."

Blood on his hands, but they wouldn't hurt another child. A terrified, hard-faced woman who spat venom all the same, and wouldn't she do terribly under the Qun, worse than Gatt—Just get out, and take the rest with you, he said, and thought about how the hell he was going to write the report. Human children who hadn't had enough to eat in months, small and tired and beyond running from him, no time to save them and get the job done, but—

You are too valuable here to reassign, Hissrad. So they had trusted him again. The good of the Qun above all. And hadn't that gone well.

He had nothing to say. There were no words for Seheron.

"Yeah," Krem said, "thought not," and The Iron Bull could have snarled in frustration.

He kept it in check, turned from Krem with every intention of leaving to clear his head.

"Nonetheless," Maevaris said, from where she stood in the doorway again, "Iron Bull is correct in this: you cannot follow him."

She touched a hand lightly to The Iron Bull's shoulder. "I can take them to the border. They can see to it that you have somewhere safe to bring Dorian, and I can see to it that you find them again."

"Now, just see here," Dalish began.

"Yeah," The Iron Bull said, cutting across her. "They can do that. They're a good bunch, I trust them."

"Do you indeed," Maevaris said. 

The Iron Bull shrugged, and she let it lie, although the look she gave him was searching.

"Ah, shit," Krem said. "I see how it is."

"I have taken every precaution I can to see that he returns to you," Maevaris said. "Please be satisfied with that, if you can."

Whatever Skinner muttered was too low to catch. No other protest was offered.

"Right," The Iron Bull said, and glanced back at them one last time against his better judgement. "Are we done here?"

"I guess we are," Krem said.

The Iron Bull nodded, and left before anyone could have a burst of sentiment or come up with a better counter-argument; stood in the hallway and felt at a loss, caught in the tense space where all the preparations were made but the hour had not yet come for action.

They will be safe, he told himself. You've achieved that much, at least.

 

 

"The new day will come soon," Maevaris said. "We reckon it from the midnight bell, not from the dawn. They will take him then. But you are ready."

"Yeah," The Iron Bull said. "I'm ready."

"Walk with me one final time," she said. "I will take you where you need to go, and then I will see your people safe."

He nodded, beyond words, no room in him for anything but the tense twist of anticipation that had been growing all night. He was trusting her too much, perhaps. But then, Dorian had trusted her, and so had Krem, in his way.

They walked together: out, again, down the steps to the garden, and along its winding paths. The Iron Bull, who had tried to memorise their route before, found that he didn't recognise the shape of it; the pavilion the path led to ought to have been visible from the house, with its high roof and bright colours. He had not seen it before. 

Anywhere else he might have felt enchantment at work, but the whole of Qarinus hummed with magic, no way to distinguish one piece from the next.

"You leave my protection when you pass through this door," Maevaris said, "and I leave you here. You know your part. Go well."

The Iron Bull stood for some time alone before the door, and breathed as his Tama had taught him until he was sure he could stretch out his hand without seeing it shake. Fucking magic; fucking Magisters.

The door, then. 

Green leaves covered it, painted in minute detail, veined in gold. Even in the dark, he could see it clearly. It had no handle, nor could any sign of a mechanism be seen. But he put his hand to it, and it opened for him; he stepped over the threshold, felt a coldness spread across him, the bone deep chill of mountain water. But it lasted only an instant.

Before him stood a tall arch of ancient carved wood, framing something that might have been glass, though it was as dull and unreflective as if it had been tumbled in the sea. It showed nothing of his image, nor anything of what lay beyond it, although shadows seemed to move within it.

He disliked it more than anything else this land had so far thrown at him, and it was the only way forward he had.

He took out the knife with reluctance, cursed himself under his breath; wished, in fact, for his earlier resignation. Of all the stupid things he'd ever done—

The knife was very sharp. It cut into his finger cleanly: a narrow line that barely stung, that welled blood slowly.

He hadn't thought it possible, but the feeling of magic in the room became more oppressive, seemed to crowd him, tug at him.

Of all the stupid things, he thought, again, and pressed his finger to the surface of the glass.

It rippled into iridescent life, casting unnatural light across the room. It did not resemble glass now so much as water, shimmering and shifting. But what lay beyond it remained impossible to say. 

It did not seem to be a decision he made to step through it; rather, it compelled him, and against every instinct he possessed he allowed it to do so.

 

 

The Iron Bull stumbled into a dense fog and, turning, found the archway he had stepped through again dull and blank. 

Nothing lived here, and nothing stirred. The air was utterly still, and the mist did not swirl; it might have been frozen in time. But there was light, diffuse and blue-tinted, coming from all sides.

In the centre of the space stood a well, though it held no water, and beside it was a cracked and weathered plinth, low and broad, empty of whatever statue or column it might once have held. In its centre it was worn concave and strangely smooth.

Arches like the one he had passed through formed an uneven ring around the well, in some places standing five deep, in others solitary. Many of them were broken, missing their apexes or tilting drunkenly on their footings.

The Iron Bull's footsteps echoed on the paving stones, loud in the silence.

Would they come by the same means he himself had? Presumably, though through what arch he could not say. There might too be some even stranger magic at work. To hide seemed implausible. But he had this in his favour: they would not be looking for him.

Besides the archways, the debris of some forgotten age stretched out around him, half-obscured by the fog, mere outlines. There were walls, and statues, and massive urns, almost all crumbling, abandoned entirely. 

He took his place among them, and became still, imagined himself as stone; took deep slow breaths, felt his heart beat calm and steady.

They came. Through a suddenly brilliant arch, a procession of humans dressed in black and gold, brown and silver, white and bronze. Cloaks they wore, and hoods; upon their arms were heavy rings, and upon their fingers also. The people of the Courts, solemn and deliberate in their movement through this place, and in the midst of them, somewhere—he must be there, imagine if he was not, if he was safe—but it could not be—

Dorian's robes were white, and he walked with his head held high, his shoulders back; he alone wore no cloak, but let his arms remain bare, his head uncovered, and he looked neither left nor right. He moved as one in a trance, but there was a pride to him all the same, and no little beauty.

It was all The Iron Bull could do not to rush to him upon the instant. 

Dorian knelt upon the plinth, and the procession flowed around him. Not one of them looked in The Iron Bull's direction. Stone, he thought, I am stone, I simply am, I do not struggle. There is no struggle. 

Breathe in, breathe out. Measure each moment by the beat of the heart.

The light from the arch the procession had passed through wavered and died, and the people of the procession became dark shapes that moved through the blue light, fanning out around the edge of the empty space. They passed by The Iron Bull as though he were nothing but an ancient statue. Of no relevance or interest.

There was a moment of living stillness. Someone drew a heavy breath. Cloth was pulled softly across cloth. 

Dorian's hands, folded upon his knees, betrayed the very slightest tremor. His face was still.

The Iron Bull tensed himself like coiling a spring, like the mechanism of some clever dwarven device, like drawing a crossbow. 

A bell chimed once; someone must hold it in their hand to strike the hour. But it sounded very far away.

Movement: a ripple spreading across the surface of every archway at once.

They opened, flared a sick green, their surfaces twisting and bulging.

The Iron Bull leapt forward.

Through the archways, some other reality poured, tore and twisted at the shape of the place, and The Iron Bull flew before it with the quickness of desperation.

He had barely placed a hand on Dorian when it engulfed them both, a flood crashing down upon them from all sides at once.

"Bull," Dorian cried, his voice pained. "Bull!"

And he was there, holding Dorian's taut and shaking body in his arms as things felt but unseen circled them in the twisting green landscape. "Yeah," he said, "yeah, it's me, it's Bull, I've got you."

He had no way of knowing if Dorian heard him.

Around them, everything shifted without pause. A child's bedroom, a dim cellar, a path through a garden, a room full of desks and windows which looked out onto—he couldn't say, it was gone too fast, flipping and twisting and pulling out of shape, the desks on the walls, the floor become sky.

A hall full of dancers, turning and turning.

The clearing.

It was not real. It was not. If the Bull focused, he could make out the figures, the arches, the ruins, hazy, wavering in and out of sight. But for a moment, he quite nearly wanted to believe it. Look, you see, you're safe, here we are, it's our place.

He tightened his arms around Dorian. Against his chest, Maevaris' ring hung heavily on a chain. The weight of it seemed to hold them anchored to the plinth, a solid reminder of the existence of up and down: this is the form of things. Don't forget.

Dorian shuddered, twisted as the scenery did, terrified nonsense spilling from his lips, fragments of words. Choked, hands clawing at the Bull's arm until they slackened suddenly with the shift, all the tension punched out of Dorian in one, and for a terrifying moment the Bull thought—

Hissrad held Vasaad’s body. He had been so angry, and Hissrad had known, let him fight anyway, let off steam. Take point. Wrong, all wrong - you shouldn’t fight, not like that, not blindly and on anger alone. Don’t fight. There's nothing to fight. Struggle is an illusion. 

He couldn't remember why he held someone already dead. Vasaad wasn't there anymore, an empty shell, red on the neck, broken. There was no point to it at all, keeping hold of someone so entirely lost. just as there was no point to fighting. In Hissrad, a voice whispered: why not just let go?

No.

Hissrad had never thought it pointless to mourn. He cared too much, held the memory of the people he lost. It ate away at him, but it wasn't wrong. They deserved it. Not to be forgotten. And if Hissrad cared hopelessly much, then the Bull was beyond all reason.

Dorian gasped, cried out, still alive, and the Bull wondered if his arms would even remember how to let go when they finally must.

What was it Dorian saw? His eyes were open but never came to rest on the Bull, seemed to stare through him; he flinched from whatever was shown to him, tried to tear himself from the Bull's arms. "Release me," he gasped, breathless but definite. "Release me! You cannot keep me here, I have made my decision." 

_You must not release me,_ he had said, and kissed the Bull, slow and wet. _No matter what I say, no matter what I do, however I beg. You understand the impossibility of it?_

For a flickering moment, the Bull saw some other face in the fog: like and unlike Dorian, the features heavier, the skin lined with age. Not his cheeks or the line of his jaw, but a likeness in the nose. Father. Dorian's father. Did he stand there in the watching circle, suddenly revealed by some chance? Was he an illusion only?

You are no son of mine.

"Father," Dorian said, "Father, please."

They didn't care for children, these people of Tevinter. 

Flames. Hissrad choked on smoke, his eyes stinging. The heat scorched even his thick skin. There had been children screaming before—ragged, desperate cries. Now only the fire and the building spoke together, roared and snapped around him, groaned under the strain. He held some creature that kicked and twisted, no imekari nor yet a human child—a pet, perhaps, matted fur, scrabbling claws gouging at Hissrad's arm. Wrong, his priorities all out of order, where were the children, did any yet live—he had no time for this pathetic thing, it would not survive in any case, breathed badly already, fire catching at its coat—

No, that was wrong. Why was it wrong? Hard to think clearly, the flames, the heat—

Against his chest, a cool weight. A ring, Hissrad had never carried a ring, but the Bull, the Bull did, hadn't Maevaris said—

A betrothal gift. A very bad joke, he had thought. But if they made it through this, they would be bound, in their own way. He had no idea what that would mean. But he felt it, true and vast. 

Held on. Dorian, drenched in sweat, was fever-warm against the Bull's chest. Raised voices, from everywhere and nowhere—did those people who had thought to do this to Dorian watch? Did they too fear?

They should, the Bull thought. They should fear Dorian's strength. Supported on solid foundations, he would never fall. If the Bull held, Dorian would. They would frighten him and hurt him and make him feel that all was lost, and still: in the end, he would hold. But oh, how he hurt, flinched and jerked, now clenching his teeth, the muscles of his jaw and neck straining—now crying out open-mouthed in pain. _It kills you slowly and takes power from your death, I think._ Dorian, very quiet, in another moment in the Bull's arms, such a different one. _But perhaps all of this is only a story too._ Perhaps.

Above them, he thought that some great beast of legend was unfurling its wings. He couldn't have said if it was real. But it hardly mattered. He had purpose.

"Kill me," Dorian said, the words slurred. "Kill me before it takes me, I'll die as myself—my terms—oh, Maker—"

"No," the Bull said, though the plea had not been addressed to him. His heart beat desperately in his chest, the terror of the idea like a crushing pressure bearing down on him, bowing his head. He kissed Dorian's brow, curled around him as though he could make a physical shield of himself. "It's not going to take you."

Is it not?

Warm sunlight fell across The Iron Bull's shoulders, and in his arms Dorian stretched, languid, soft brown skin bare under The Iron Bull's hands as they kissed lazily. Grass below them, the scent of flowers rising all around.

"I could stay this way forever," Dorian mumbled, sighed softly against The Iron Bull's mouth, sad, why was he sad, what was there to be sad about? Magic tingled across The Iron Bull's skin, pulled close around Dorian. "Oh, you feel good, Bull. If it were only real."

Something twisted, strained—tore. The Bull felt it like the satisfyingly sickening yank of pulling away a dry scab, the whole of him left raw and tender in its wake. For an instant, there was a perfect, horrible clarity. 

From all around them, shocked faces stared.

Dorian, too, looked up at the Bull in shocked disbelief, wide-eyed. His hands trembled on the Bull's shoulders, his lips parted. It's me, the Bull wanted to tell him, I'm real, I'm here, I wouldn't leave you—

He might have spoken, but there wasn't the time. The illusion was gone, but above them that huge something circled, cried out. The Bull could see the moment when the pain hit Dorian again, tightening his features, jolting his body forward. But he was still Dorian, and they were still at the Crossroads. Images tugged and pulled at the Bull, a camp in the jungle, an escaped slave staring him down, the Tal-Vashoth lying bloody around him. But they fractured and fragmented before they could fully form. Dorian remained Dorian.

It was enough of an opening. Time.

He hauled himself to his feet. All around them, arches radiated that sick green light which belonged to another world. But there was a way, somewhere, somewhere—

The well. It was no longer an empty thing opening onto blackness. Instead, it rippled with the same iridescence as the arches had before, living as water, and all the Bull had to do was let Dorian fall.

His arms ached with a tension born of fear.

If he was wrong, if this was not the moment—

To trust himself in his judgement was a good deal harder than to trust Dorian with his safety.

Dorian could pray to his Maker. The Bull could only wish: be safe, be whole, be free. One last kiss, to Dorian's shoulder this time, as if to seal it.

It took the greatest of efforts to let his arms go slack, and he felt the loss of Dorian's solid weight as though a part of himself had been wrenched from him.

Why do you take my things from me, he thought he heard a voice say. Do you not feel how I sing in your blood? It knows me, if you do not. 

Above him, more definitely this time, wings spread. Although the light in that place seemed to come from everywhere, a shadow fell across him, and with it a chill.

You want only the same things I want, the voice said. To take, to own. To destroy. I suppose I could let you destroy him in my place. You who carry corruption with you. Or I could take you in his place.

I only have to step forward, the Bull thought. He was poised on the edge of the well, and its surface still shimmered, and on the other side was Dorian.

But he feared the truth of the words. Qunari needed the Qun, needed to control themselves with rules, needed to watch one another. He had known it since Seheron. Why, if not because of some deep corruption?

Perhaps he shouldn't go to Dorian. Perhaps he should trust that Maevaris would take care of him.

The huge something circled lower, its huge head sweeping into view. Dragon, the Bull thought. There were no dragons. They were all dead or gone. A qunari legend, pure wild power, uncontrolled. A little like gods. A little like ancestors.

The dragon breathed chill over him, and he shivered involuntarily, but his blood pounded hot through his body.

It did sing in him, this creature. He had felt it the entire time, but not known it, not been able to distinguish it from the tangle of magic in the place. Now it was clear and loud. 

There, the dragon said. I have you. Let me take you.

Yeah. Yeah, that wouldn't be so bad. Hadn't he been looking for something to lose himself in?

The dragon made a noise of contentment. The lazy sweep of a wing sent the fog roiling around him.

The Bull closed his eye.

But the dragon's song was not the only thing that surrounded him. Around the scent of flowers rose, achingly familiar. He opened his eye again, expecting some new illusion—some last moment to see Dorian's face, even if only in memory. But the clearing was not there; he remained at the Crossroads, balanced precariously between worlds. The scent of flowers persisted.

The pouch at his belt was warm against his hip. Four flowers. 

How Dorian had looked at him when he took the fourth, all that fascination and fear and hope. How he longed to see Dorian look at him again, in wonder. How he longed to be worthy of the trust Dorian had placed in him.

There was a calm stillness that came with that scent, as though a little bit of the peace of the clearing was with the Bull still, and with it a kind of clarity.

I could break Dorian's heart, the Bull thought, and knew it was true.

"No," he said aloud, let all his frustration and fear turn to angry defiance. He turned on the edge of the well, stared up at the beast. "I'm not you. I'm not yours." His hand on his axe. He swung it heavily over his shoulder, bared his teeth.

The dragon cried out in rage, twisted in the murky air, diving towards him, maw open. But it aimed too high, a snap of great teeth to close around a standing target. The Bull had only to shift his weight backward; all the same, he felt the breath of the thing, the wind of its passage. The scaled hide so close he could have touched it, glittering with frost. A moment of longing: oh, to have been able to fight a creature like that—

He fell.

 

 

In a dizzying flip of perspective, the Bull found himself no longer falling but rather stumbling through a familiar archway. I've been tricked, he thought desperately. I've been thrown through some weird-ass twist of space and dumped back in some other corner of the Crossroads to be toyed with some more. He grasped after strategies. Found none. Fuck, fuck, fuck. 

But his automatic cataloguing of his surroundings calmed him after a moment: it was quite ordinary darkness that surrounded him, a small room dimly illuminated by the shifting surface of the archway. Reliefs on the walls in gold and red, the floor an elaborate mosaic, well-kept.

The glow cast by the arch didn't fade. Only a matter of time before someone or something followed them through. The Bull forced himself to focus. Practicality. There'd be time for sentiment later.

Dorian knelt on that floor before him, head bowed forward almost to the ground. His breathing was harsh, and there was still a slight tremor in his limbs.

"Ah, shit, you went and overdid it, didn't you," the Bull said, running to him, dropping to the ground to touch a hand to Dorian's back and checking him over. No visible injuries, that was good at least. 

Dorian tried to laugh, and the Bull allowed himself the feeling of reassurance that provoked, that Dorian heard him, understood him, finally.

"Oh, and I'm sure you've—been—"

He trailed off with a groan.

"Hey, easy," the Bull said. "We're not clear yet. You good to stand?"

Dorian tried, muscles tensing. Shook his head.

"Yeah, don't sweat it. I'll get you up."

"I can still feel it," Dorian said.

So could the Bull. It was fainter now, but it echoed in him still. Ancient and angry, this thing that was the foundation of the Magisters' power, that in some way knew his blood.

He wondered if Maevaris had known or guessed that it would be that way. Get out of Tevinter by morning. Right.

Dorian was by no means small for a human, and it took a substantial effort for the Bull to heave him to his feet. But this time he was no dead weight, did his best to help, although he seemed utterly drained.

They stumbled outside.

Lawns stretched out before them, a broad stone path running straight ahead across them.

At the edge of the grass, a white horse grazed. On its hooves, metal gleamed, gold and silver.

"Going to have to send your Maevaris the biggest damn fruit basket in Thedas," the Bull said, and Dorian did manage to laugh at that.

"Send her bananas," he said faintly. "Big ones. She'll love that."

"Can't get bigger than the ones from Par Vollen," the Bull said, hefting Dorian up and guiding him onto the horse's back. It allowed them their clumsy struggle with impressive placidity.

Dorian leaned forward against its neck, and it huffed, but stayed steady. "No," he said. "I rather imagine not. But I certainly do my best."

The Bull swung himself up after. Behind them, in the building, there was movement. Demons, Magisters—probably there wasn't a great deal of difference.

"You do at that," he said, settling behind Dorian, grabbing the reins. "Ah, shit, I'm no good with horses."

But the horse seemed entirely disinterested in doing anything but taking them wherever it was Maevaris had decided they should go. The slightest touch of the Bull's heels to its sides and it sprang into motion; the Bull hardly had the time to see that figures were bursting out through the door before the building, the lawns and the path had all fallen away.

 

 

It was the same sense of wrenching disorientation as the stuff of the fade crashing over them. The Bull wouldn't have been surprised if he'd looked down to find they were riding across water, or through the sky. As it was he could hardly tell where they were—he could register only single details: a tree, a low wall, reeds along the bank of a lake. He had thought to hold onto Dorian and keep a lookout for danger, but the constant shifting as they flew across the landscape was enough to turn his stomach.

He bowed his head to Dorian's instead, pressed a kiss behind his ear.

Dorian seemed hardly to be there now, too drained to so much as hold himself up. The Bull kept one arm locked around his waist, the other on the reins—the horse seemed unlikely to mind either way, but it made him feel better. He had the sense that they were followed, that something raced behind them. Something dark in the corner of his field of vision, limited though it was, that seemed not to change as the landscape did. A feeling on the back of his neck.

Perhaps he imagined it. He didn't really trust _perhaps_ , though. It could also be a Magister, or some twisting trail of the fade that reached out to take back something it felt it owned. The dragon's song was faint now and growing fainter by the moment, but it was not yet silenced. He wondered if it still felt like pain to Dorian.

He urged the horse on, couldn't tell if it made any kind of difference.

The sky began to lighten.

 

 

The horse slowed as the sun broke the horizon, and the landscape resolved itself into dusty scrub. There was a single cluster of buildings in sight, some ancient farmer's cottage with outhouses and a drystone wall, although there was no farmland left around it. It had a dilapidated look to it. The roof on one of the outhouses had given way, and the wall was in poor repair.

That dark something which the Bull had thought followed them seemed to shoot past them, fast enough for have been imagination, except—

There. Fucking demons.

A small thing, no more than a shade. It hung back, skittered through the dry grass to the right of the house. But if something like that could follow them, it wouldn't be alone.

The dragon's song reached him only in single notes now, fragmentary and faint. Its mind grasped after his, but he was very nearly beyond its reach. This, then, must be the true border. The edge of its domain. He thought that it searched for them still, felt it write and rage and try to stretch its claws out to touch a world it had never been able to manipulate directly. But it was trapped, as it always had been. Just a little further—

"Hey," the Bull said, encouraging the horse to move forward, to test the shade's reaction. "Hey, Dorian, you with me? We've got company."

Dorian stirred weakly against him, raised his head. "Ah. A spy."

The shade moved restlessly, edged closer, hovered between them and the house. The horse stilled.

"You think you can stay on by yourself?" the Bull asked Dorian.

"I suppose we'll find out," Dorian said, and if he had enough spirit to talk shit he was probably good to hold his seat for a minute or two.

The Bull swung himself down, reached up to steady Dorian, kissed his hand. Dorian laughed.

"Ridiculous."

"Yeah," the Bull agreed easily. "Right. Give me a moment."

He was about as tired as he'd ever been, and wary of what the shade might call to them, but if he took care of it fast and got Dorian over the border then maybe it'd be fine.

He didn't really believe it, but it was a nice thought.

Grass crackled under his feet as he shifted his footing, adjusted his grip on his axe, ready to spring forward.

He was on the verge of leaping, and he had no idea that he was capable of stopping himself. But:

"Not a step further," a voice said, "if you please, Ashkaari."

The Bull would have fallen, so abruptly he found himself pulled up short, but he had the presence of mind to bring his axe down head-first to the ground, an impromptu support. His shoulder jarred at the impact. Dust rose in a cloud around him.

Dorian's breath hissed in sharply, the outline of a curse.

Between them and the house, where the shade had hovered so indecisively, a man stood. He had not been there a breath before. He wore the robes of a magister.

This face the Bull had seen before, solemn in the procession, wide-eyed with shock as Dorian cracked through the ritual's illusions. 

"Magister Pavus," Dorian said. Even exhausted, he could manage to sound acerbic. "I should have known you would have no respect for the contents of my mind."

"Dorian," Halward Pavus said, entreating.

"No," the Bull snarled. "No. You were ready to _kill_ him."

"It is more complicated than that," Halward said. "It would not have—that is, I believed—I had taken measures. I only wanted my son to have a chance to be normal."

" _Fuck,_ " Dorian said. "Don't claim this was for me! I never wanted to be anything but what I am. This was for _you._ " The Bull took a step back towards him, kept his eyes on Halward but spared a hand to touch Dorian's leg. Grounding, reassuring.

Dorian was trembling.

The Bull itched to hurt Halward. A fist to the face, nose breaking against the Bull's fingers.

He controlled himself.

"What kind of bargain did you think you'd made, father?" Dorian asked. "I assure you, you were cheated. That thing made every attempt to destroy me."

What could a demon not do, with the support of a Magister who believed it to be his son? Fuck.

The moment when that realisation caught up with Halward too was clear. His expression was mask-like, but his shoulders stiffened sharply.

"Am I truly so wrong that you would take that kind of ludicrous risk to—to _fix_ me?" Dorian asked. 

Halward's silence was damning. A terrible thing, that lack of denial.

"Why did you follow us?" the Bull demanded.

"To retrieve my son from your hands," Halward said. 

"Your son have any kind of a say in this?"

"My son does not always see the danger he places himself in," Halward said.

"No shit," the Bull said, flung it out like a challenge.

"I feel safer here than I ever could with you," Dorian snapped. "Were all your ideals nothing more than talk? The resort of a weak mind, wasn't it, to deal with demons?"

Halward flinched, but he held his chin high. It was strange to see such a familiar gesture of defiance on him. The Bull loved that look on Dorian.

"Remove yourself," Halward told the Bull sharply. "These are family affairs. Ashkaari, go."

The idea of this particular kind of compulsion did hold: that name had power over the Bull. He'd felt it when Halward first spoke, and he felt it now. The power of it crawled restlessly under his skin, demanded movement.

But it was not absolute. He could stand against it. He'd stood against worse. Ashkaari was his name, but it wasn't his only name. It was a part of him. Another part of him, the part that had become The Bull, was not compelled.

"What do you say, Dorian?" the Bull asked, casual as he could. "You want me to go?"

Halward stared at him in startlement. The Bull thought of magisters on Seheron, shocked that all their powers weren't enough to keep them alive. That arrogance, the belief that they knew it all.

Dorian laughed, a horrible tension to the sound. "What, so my beloved father can drag me home and try to find some new way to make me acceptable? Rather you didn't, if it's all the same."

The Bull shrugged at Halward. "You heard the man."

"Go home, father," Dorian said tiredly. "I shan't give you another chance to change me, and I imagine you'll have quite enough to do trying to keep the Courts in order after this mess."

The Bull thought he might be crying, but he refrained from looking. The catch of his breath, and the stricken look on Halward's face—but the Bull let Dorian have his moment.

There was silence between them.

"I have failed you," Halward said.

"Yes," Dorian said. "You have."

The Bull shifted his grip on the haft of his axe with an overplayed performance of idleness. Halward's eyes seemed drawn inexorably to it by the motion.

"They will pursue you," Halward said. "The rest of the Magisterium. All the people of the Courts."

" _You_ will not pursue us," Dorian said, and the Bull felt a swell of pride at the strength Dorian had found to place behind those words.

"I wished only—" Halward began, and sighed deeply. "You are correct. I have no right."

"Save what face you can at home," Dorian said. "I know that's what's most important to you. But I can't do it for you. I won't."

Halward bowed his head. For a moment, the Bull thought he might be getting ready for one last attack, drawing on some creepy power or other for a final desperate attempt to get his way.

But then he was gone. For a silent moment, the Bull couldn't manage to lower his guard—felt, too, the tension lingering in Dorian beside him. But then all the tension went out of Dorian at once. He didn't so much dismount as fall from the horse, slumping down into the Bull's arms. The Bull helped him the rest of the way down, settled him on his feet, but kept an arm around him.

The Bull stroked his hair, laughed at the little noise of protest Dorian made even as he leant into the touch. Relief, relief, relief.

"I thought he'd compel you to give me back," Dorian said. "I thought I'd have to kill him. My own father—"

"Hey," the Bull said. "You didn't."

"And I didn't kill you, either," Dorian said, turned his face up towards the Bull. "I could have, you know. When I thought you were an illusion, I was furious. The idea that nothing in my mind was safe—I could hardly bear it."

The Bull, at a loss for words to name all the things he felt in that moment, could only pull Dorian close and kiss him.

"Come on," he said, voice rough. "Last bit. You're nearly free."

They walked the last steps side by side, and if Dorian had to lean against the Bull a bit, well, there was no shame in that.

Inside the Bull's head, there was finally silence.

 

 

Krem was leaning against the wall outside the main house.

"Took your sweet time," he called, and the Bull laughed, treated him to a patently obscene gesture.

"I'll have to remember that one," Dorian said. Krem snorted.

There were worse starts the two of them could've gotten off to.

The chimney didn't seem trustworthy, so they built a campfire out in the yard. A good place to sit and drink, passing a bottle of the worst whiskey the Bull had ever tasted while the light grew around them. Dorian sat close beside him, and let their hands brush together over and over again, I'm here, you're here, it's real.

They'd fucked twice, and the intimacy of that had been overwhelming, but this was something else. It should, maybe, be more frightening. But the Bull had no fear left in him, not for this. He'd chosen, and he'd thought it meant death. That it meant life instead was a shock. 

Not, after all, an unwelcome one.

It grew early. Around what was probably breakfast time for anyone respectable Dalish and Skinner left them, off to find some private corner to curl up together in after a busy night. Krem followed soon after, with a smirk at the two of them that completely undid all the hard work he'd been putting into not saying anything vulgar.

Dorian leaned in closer against the Bull's side.

"What happens now?" he asked.

"We sleep," the Bull said, deliberately obtuse in the face of a terrifying certainty that he could in fact answer the question that was really being asked. "Wake up together. I kiss you until you're too turned on to stand just from that, fuck you nice and slow like you deserve—"

Dorian laughed. "Oh, have it your way, you insufferable idiot. But I meant, well, I was thinking—a little further into the future than that."

"It'll work itself out," the Bull said. "I've heard I run a mercenary company. We head south, find some work, keep an eye out for Magisters in the wardrobe."

Dorian swallowed. "Together, you mean?"

"Well, yeah," the Bull said. "I mean, if you like. Your friend Maevaris says you're a delicate type, but the Free Marches shouldn't be too cold."

"At least it isn't Ferelden," Dorian said. It sounded a lot like agreement.

The Bull heaved a sigh, certainly not of relief, and settled his arm around Dorian's shoulders. 

The fire died down, and the warmth of the sun grew. About time to find something to sleep on, then.

 

 

There were in fact beds in the farmhouse, freshly made. In the air of the room Dorian and the Bull had been left, no mustiness lingered.

Dorian lit the lanterns with a wave of his hand, frowned at who knew what.

Not the room, surely. It was plain, but nothing worse than that. A pitcher of water stood by the window, a pile of necessities on a small table beside. Cloths and soap and more. 

They had made their way up to the room without giving up on a moment of touch, and now, faced with the prospect of washing and undressing, the Bull was at a loss.

"Should get you straight into bed," he said, as though he was sure of himself. "You need rest."

"I do," Dorian said. "But I need a number of other things too. To wash, for a start. And—" he hesitated, glanced away. But the Bull could take a good guess. 

"Really?"

Dorian shrugged. "It would reassure me, I think. I must confess that I find myself rather afraid to sleep. Quite ridiculous, but—"

The Bull thought about the fade, the wrongness of it, the sea of images and memories trying to pull him down.

"Sounds pretty sensible to me," he said, and won a smile. "Right. You want to heat this up for me?"

"Such enthusiasm for casual magic use," Dorian said fondly, and reached for the water. The touch of his fingertips to the surface, and it began to steam. Dorian frowned again. "Magic feels very strange here."

The Bull watched him, considered. It _was_ different, now he stopped to consider it; he'd never thought that much about exactly how magic felt before, but it was as if Dorian's magic had grown quieter. It pulled less at the Bull. Where before he had seemed to draw power from the world around him, now it seemed as though power spilled out from him, no more than a gentle wash of warmth. "Dalish said the same about magic in Tevinter."

"Yes. I suppose it isn't entirely unexpected." Dorian stared at his hands, turned them over, as though he would see some difference there too. Perhaps he did. "I have, after all, forfeited many kinds of connection in the last few hours."

The Bull thought to reach for him, but then Dorian looked up. He was smiling again, rather worn, but genuine. 

"Knowing where the power comes from," Dorian said, "I can't claim to feel particularly sorry about that loss. But it will be an adjustment."

There it was: Dorian, realising everything was truly changed for him. The Bull knew the feeling, had woken up alone in Rivain one morning on an unfamiliar bed and listened to jungle birds screaming on the roof and known himself to be beyond the limits of every map he had.

It hadn't been one of his better days.

He did reach for Dorian then, slow touches, fingers on the back of his neck, at the base of his skull. Slower kisses.

Dorian allowed the Bull to undress him, pliant under the Bull's hands. His white robes were stained and dusty, and he gave a sigh of relief as they fell away; reached, then, for the Bull in turn. A moment of surprise—that Dorian should want to take care of him in this same way.

Dorian's fingers struggled with the buckle of the Bull's harness, the leather heavy and stiff. He laughed about his tired clumsiness, persisted until it finally loosened.

The Bull felt achingly fond of him.

Trousers were easier, and then the Bull bent to help Dorian with the brace; showing him the trick of it would have to wait for another time.

Something strange, then: to stand naked together with the suggestion of sex somewhere in the background, but not urgently present. Not the easiness of bathing with comrades, no. But not an overtly sexual moment either. 

"I'll wash you," the Bull said; took a cloth and wet it, smiled down at Dorian, pressed a chaste kiss to his lips and a gentle hand to his back.

When he pulled back, Dorian looked a little flustered. "It's not necessary."

The Bull shrugged. "I want to."

Dorian swallowed, let his eyes fall closed. He nodded.

The Bull took care, worked without hurry, let water run in rivulets down Dorian's chest, down his back. Drew the cloth down the length of Dorian's arm, rinsed it, dragged it back up. 

Time was a luxury he had never really had with Dorian before. Before, by the river—it seemed like it should have been years ago. It could only have been weeks.

He knelt to wash Dorian's legs, struck as he settled with his knee on the paved floor by the familiar unfamiliarity of the moment. Once before he had knelt before Dorian, and he had thought it like a parody then, a knight kneeling in supplication before a lord in some Orlesian tapestry.

"Oh, Bull," Dorian said softly, and the Bull knew that the image had caught up with him too.

The touch of Dorian's hand upon the crown of his head was light, entirely without pressure. The Bull's horns bracketed Dorian's legs.

They stayed balanced like that for a beat, and then another.

"I should be kneeling before you," Dorian said at last. "Bull—I owe you my life."

An uncomfortable idea. 

"None of that," the Bull said. "Nobody _owes_ anything here, not like that. Leave that shit in Tevinter where it belongs."

"I see," Dorian said uncertainly. 

The Bull relented. "Doesn't mean you can't give me stuff," he said. "Just do it because you want to, like I'm doing for you." He looked up, met Dorian's gaze; saw that he looked reassured. Well, good. The Bull was feeling this out as he went, but it felt right to him too.

He returned to his work. Thighs, calves—feet, and there he lingered for a moment, head bowed, feeling the significance of it. Back up to clean between Dorian's legs. The lightest of touches to his cock, still soft, surrounded by curling dark hair. Over his balls, further back.

Dorian shivered.

"This alright?" the Bull asked.

"More than," Dorian said, and there it was, a hot spark of interest.

The Bull put the cloth aside, satisfied, and leant in to kiss Dorian's hip.

"Up here," Dorian demanded, and the Bull, laughing, did as he was asked: an inelegant clamber to get back up onto his feet, but he managed it.

Dorian's efforts at cleaning him were rather less chaste than the Bull's had been, but the Bull really had no objections. Dorian followed a swipe of a fresh cloth with the press of his mouth, let his fingers linger on the Bull's chest, teased at the Bull's cock and smiled when it twitched and began to harden in his hand, stretched up and looped an arm around the Bull's neck to get a kiss.

"What can you manage?" the Bull asked, cupped Dorian's face, thumb to cheekbone.

"Anything at all," Dorian said, a quirk of the lips. "No, perhaps not, but I want—oh, what don't I want. I want to feel you everywhere. I want it to be real."

"Oh, it's real," the Bull said, with a lopsided smile. But he knew exactly what Dorian meant. The same need lived in him, and although they had been touching constantly since the fade it would not be easily satisfied.

These things the Bull would treasure: the drag and slide of newly-washed skin as they settled together on the bed. The realisation that Dorian's hair tended to curl, seeing it damp and disheveled in the morning light. There were one or two threads of grey in it. In a few years he'd be distinguished as anything, and the Bull would pretty likely get to see that. More than that: he wanted to.

Dorian's head between the Bull's hands. A more frantic kiss now, raw, fueled by that image. The strange bleedthrough of the everyday into the sexual. 

Dorian panted into the Bull's mouth, then against his neck, the hollow of his throat. A trailing line of kisses, a hint of bite to them.

"Leave marks," the Bull said, groaned as the next touch of Dorian's mouth turned sharp. "Fuck, yeah, like that."

"What will they say, your little company, when you turn up bruised," Dorian murmured, smiled against the Bull's skin.

The Bull laughed, head falling back against pillows, horns scraping at the headboard. Beds made for humans. "All sorts of shit. But they won't care."

Dorian's exploration of the Bull's body was thorough, ungentle. But even in the rough scrape of his nails along the line of the Bull's ribs, his touches were full of care.

There was, against all odds, a bottle of oil among the jumble of necessities on the table. Maevaris amusing herself by meddling in Dorian's affairs, or Krem's idea of a pointed gift, maybe. They weren't anything like subtle back in Qarinus, not that he felt particularly sorry about that.

A revelation: Dorian's beautiful fingers, slick between the Bull's legs. The press of his thumb up against the Bull's balls as the tip of his middle finger pushed experimentally against the Bull's hole. Dorian's mouth closed around the tip of the Bull's cock, no part of the Bull left untouched by his presence.

The Bull groaned, bore down, encouraging Dorian's finger to push into him.

There had been an image last night, a fleeting little fantasy; it came back to him now. The slow slide of Dorian's cock inside him. The tamassrans had fucked him like that sometimes, but he'd indulged only rarely since. It'd seldom seemed called for. He couldn't, right now, imagine why.

Dorian pulled back to smile up at him, eyes wickedly dark, aroused and amused in equal parts. "Good?"

"Oh, yeah," the Bull said. "You want to give me another?"

"Hm," Dorian said, bowed his head to kiss the Bull's cock as he rearranged his hand. A renewed press, so teasingly slow. "I'll give you as much as you want."

"Promises," the Bull said, and he'd meant it to be flippant, hadn't he, to laugh it off—how did it come out so hoarse with longing?

"Let me," Dorian said, and his sincerity took the Bull's breath away. 

The deliberate curl of Dorian's fingers inside him did it again a moment later.

They fucked with the Bull on his stomach, Dorian stretched out along his back, rocking into him, slow and shallow. One of his hands curled slick on the Bull's hip, the other, tangled with the Bull's, slid across the sheets. Kisses to the back of the Bull's shoulder. Some other day they'd be filthier about it, Dorian kneeling behind him and grabbing at him, urging him on, thrusting mercilessly hard. This was all contact, safety, the unhurried sharing of pleasure an end in itself.

Dorian murmured nonsense against the Bull's back, fragments, the uneven hitching of his breath saying more than the sounds. The Bull, shifting between Dorian and the bed, his cock trapped against his stomach, didn't trouble to try and suppress his own noises. A freedom, this. They would spend themselves and sleep wrapped around one another and wake together, and oh, oh—

"Come inside me," the Bull said, groaned the words, grunted at the jolt of pleasure he felt as the movement of Dorian's hips stuttered. The pulse of his cock as his orgasm overtook him seemed to last for a very long time, and the Bull luxuriated in it, clenched around Dorian to draw it out. Dorian cried out, open-mouthed, lips still pressed against the Bull's skin.

The Bull sat with his back against the wall and gathered Dorian up in his lap after, kissed him and didn't worry about the sweetness of it. Touched him softly until he began to arch and gasp again, nowhere near getting hard but not uninterested.

To open Dorian up was easy, his body relaxed and warm. His head tipped forward against the Bull's shoulder, his hands lay loose and open against the Bull's arms.

"I'm too tired," Dorian said, a little hint of laughter trailing into a moan. "I've never been more exhausted in my life. I couldn't possibly. Fuck me anyway."

"Going to make me do all the work, huh?" the Bull said, and Dorian did laugh then.

"You like it."

"Yeah."

A little cooperative effort saw Dorian turned around, back warm against the Bull's chest. The Bull guided him with firm hands on his hips, steadied him. Slid his cock into Dorian so slowly that Dorian swore and tried to push down faster. The Bull delighted in playfully refusing him, in the way the refusal made Dorian's cock finally begin to fill again.

"Terrible," Dorian gasped. "Awful—stubborn—oh, you're incredible, give me more." His feet kicked at the sheets for leverage, found no purchase. His back arched.

This too was a simple thing. The Bull's arms around Dorian, guiding him. A palm pressed to Dorian's chest, over the heart again; the Bull's face buried in Dorian's hair. Athleticism was fun, but not for today.

"Oh, beloved," Dorian cried, bit his lip against any words that might have followed.

"Yeah," the Bull murmured. "Yeah, that's right. I've got you."

Dorian's hand came up to clutch helplessly at the Bull's, their fingers twisting together, still pressed to Dorian's chest. That was how the Bull came, at last—entwined with Dorian, surrounded by him, shuddering and shaking and anchored despite it all.

 

 

When the Bull awoke again it was late afternoon, the lanterns burning low and the room in shadow where the sun had swung away around the corner of the building. There were sounds of movement from somewhere else in the house: the creak of doors, footfall on the stairs and on the boards of the upper floor. Hushed voices. Somewhere, someone was making coffee. Dorian stirred sleepily against his arm.

Here, then, was the beginning of some new existence, incomprehensible in the scope of its potential. An untidy thing, without clearly defined boundaries.

Outside, fruit and bread and strong coffee around a well-tended fire. Krem smirked at him, and Skinner rolled her eyes; Dorian, yawning behind his hand, pretended not to watch them for reactions. Pretended, too, not to be surprised when nobody said anything.

The Bull nudged him, slipped him more food, and got a fond look of exasperation for his trouble.

"—can't stay put for long," Krem was saying.

True, of course.

"Nevarra wouldn't be a bad place to start," Dorian offered, with the air of one testing the water; glanced up at the Bull, who nodded agreement.

"Good work down that way. Minor royalty with money to spend all over." He took a deep breath, held himself for a moment in the feeling of beginning. "We can get on the road tonight if everyone's good to go."

"The sooner we get far from Tevinter, the better," Skinner said.

Krem shrugged. "Just say the word, chief."

"Right," the Bull said. "Right. Eat up and pack up."

Not a big job. Bedding stripped and rolled up, food stuffed into packs.

Dorian, looking at the empty room where they had slept, seemed as baffled as the Bull felt. A life in packs. Had he known anything of the sort before? Maybe. Family arguments. 

Still.

"This is it, then," Dorian said. "It seems—I don't know. I can't pretend I want anything more dramatic to happen, but it feels strange that it doesn't."

These things that had happened that were almost too big to approach. And here they were, watching the sky grow pink through a bedroom window.

"I wouldn't worry about it," the Bull said. "Before you know it, something will explode."

Dorian laughed. "Yes. I'm sure it will." He reached up to touch the Bull's cheek, smiled as he turned from the window. "Very well then. Shall we go?"

"Yeah, we'd better," the Bull said. "The others are waiting for us."

The old house settled into silence behind them.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The art in this chapter is by [Katie](http://serenity-fails.tumblr.com); view the pieces on tumblr [here](http://serenity-fails.tumblr.com/post/128342227971/above-them-he-thought-that-some-great-beast-of) and [here](http://serenity-fails.tumblr.com/post/128342242006/part-two-of-my-illustrations-for-homsantoft-s)!


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